GIFT  OF 


Books  by 
Rev.  John  P.  Peters,  Ph.D. 


Early  Hebrew  Story 
Annals  of  St.  Michael's 

Nippur;  or,  Explorations  and  Adven- 
tures on  the  Euphrates 

The  Scriptures,  Hebrew  and  Christian 

Arranged  and  Edited  as  an  Introduction 
to  the  Study  of  the  Bible.  Rev.  Edward 
T.  Bartlett,  D.D.,  and  Rev.  John  P. 
Peters,  Ph.D. 


f 

Modern  Christianity 


The   Plain  Gospel    Modemly    Expounded 


By 
John  P.  ffeters,  Ph.D.,  Sc.D.,  D.D. 

Rector  of  St.  Michael's  Church,  New  York 

and 
Canon  Residentiary  of  the  Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 
New  York  and  London 
Gbe  Knickerbocker  press 

1909 


COPYRIGHT,  1909 

BY 
JOHN  P.  PETERS 


fcntclierboclter  prew.  Hew  »«cl 


Defcfcatefc 

To  the  Memory  of  my 

Revered  and  Beloved  Father  in  God. 

Rt.  Rev.  Henry  Codman  Potter,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Late  Bishop  of  New  York 


iii 


FOREWORD 

HPHIS  volume  is  not  published  at  the  request  of  those 
1  to  whom  the  sermons  herein  contained  were 
preached,  as,  judging  from  their  prefaces,  is  usually  the 
case  with  volumes  of  printed  sermons.  It  is  published 
so  as  to  preserve,  in  a  form  more  permanent  than  the 
spoken  word,  certain  things  which  I  have  felt  moved  to 
utter,  which  do  not  seem  to  me  to  have  been  altogether 
said  by  others.  The  sermons  here  published  do  not  for- 
mally constitute  a  body  of  theology,  but  they  have  been 
selected  and  arranged  with  a  view  to  presenting,  in  some 
sort  of  sequence,  and  with  some  regard  to  the  due  pro- 
portion of  emphasis,  the  essentials  of  Christianity — 
the  Incarnation,  the  Resurrection,  the  Ascension,  and 
the  re-incarnation,  if  I  may  so  put  it,  of  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  in  His  followers.  I  think  I  may  claim  that  the 
doctrine  expressed  in  these  sermons  is  ancient,  orthodox, 
and  Catholic;  but  the  mode  of  statement  is  modern, 
and  the  emphasis  doubtless  different  from  that  to  which 
some  of  my  hoped  for  readers  are  accustomed.  Not  my- 
self a  good  reader  of  sermons,  nor  even  always  a  good 
listener,  I  have  hesitated  long  in  publishing  my  mate- 
rial in  sermon  form;  but  after  careful  consideration  I 
have  concluded  that  it  will  be  on  the  whole  more  intel- 
ligible to  and  more  readable  by  my  desired  public  in 
this  form  than  if  rewritten  as  a  theological  or  ethical 


vi  Foreword 

treatise,  under  some  such  title  perhaps  as  A  Modern 
Interpretation  of  Christianity.  Accordingly,  these  ser- 
mons are  presented  to  the  outside  world  almost  in  the 
form  in  which  they  were  originally  spoken  to  my  own 
people  in  St.  Michael's  Church  or  the  Cathedral  of  St. 
John  the  Divine.  I  have  described  these  sermons  as 
"orthodox" ;  but  I  apprehend  that  because  of  their  very 
orthodoxy  some  of  them  may  sound  radical,  if  not  rev- 
olutionary. Especially,  I  fear,  will  this  be  the  case  with 
the  series  of  addresses  contained  in  the  second  part  of 
the  volume,  which  are  a  literal,  not  a  conventional,  in- 
terpretation of  our  Lord's  social  teaching  by  one  who  is 
technically  a  Bible  scholar  rather  than  a  theologian. 

JOHN  P.  PETERS. 

ST.  MICHAEL'S  CHURCH,  NEW  YORK. 
St.  John  Baptist's  Day,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 
DOCTRINES  OF  THE  CHURCH 

PAGE 

The  Birth  of  God 3 

Sons  of  God 12 

The  Glory  of  God 18 

The  Echo  of  the  Cross         .        .        .        .         .  25 

The  Empty  Tomb 39 

The  Resurrection  of  God 48 

The  Mystery  of  Birth  and  Death  .        .        .        .56 

The  Real  Heaven 68 

The  Personality  of  the  Spirit        ....  78 

The  Judgment 86 

Big  Thief  and  Little  Thief 95 

The  Real  Hell 101 

Forgiveness  of  Sins 115 

Rites  and  Sacraments 127 

Priests  and  Prophets  .        .        •        .        .        .  137 

Free  Church 153 

Sabbath-Sunday 162 

Wisdom  (to  young  men) 171 

Little  Foxes  (to  young  women)  ....  192 

vii 


viii  Contents 

PART    II 
THE  SOCIAL  TEACHING  OF  OUR  LORD  JESUS  CHRIST 


PAGE 


A  Dinner  Party 211 

A  Good  Negro 224 

Palaces  and  Slums 238 

The  Servant  in  the  House 252* 

The  Needle's  Eye 264 

Tainted  Money 276 

Respectables  and  Publicans          ....  295 
Revolutionary  Christianity 312 


PART  I 
DOCTRINES  OF  THE  CHURCH 


r 


THE  BIRTH  OF  GOD 


ST.  LUKE  i;.,  12 :  Ye  shall  find  the  babe  wrapped  in  swad- 
dling clothes,  lying  in  a  manger. 

THIS  was  the  sign  which  the  angels  gave  the  shep- 
herds, by  which  they  were  to  know  that  "unto 
you  is  born  this  day,  in  the  city  of  David  a  Saviour, 
which  is  Christ  the  Lord";  and  to  you  to-day  I  bring 
Christmas  greetings,  tidings  of  great  joy.  For  the  birth 
of  Jesus  in  the  manger,  the  incarnation  of  God  in  that 
little  child,  is  a  declaration  of  the  divinity  that  is  in 
man,  of  the  glory  of  God  manifested  in  each  new  birth 
of  a  babe  on  earth.  A  babe,  poor,  naked,  helpless,  that 
cannot  do  a  thing  for  itself,  is  yet  the  God  and  King, 
before  whom  men  shall  bow  down  and  worship.  And 
he  who  does  not  recognise  that  kingship,  who  cannot 
bend  the  knee  in  reverence  there,  is  unable  to  know 
God. 

How  can  that  be?  How  can  God  be  revealed  to 
us  in  the  pathetic  helplessness  of  a  baby? 

Let  us  go  back  to  that  first  Christmas-day,  when  that 
baby,  whom  we  call  Christ,  the  Lord,  was  born  in  Beth- 
lehem. How  was  he  born?  I  nto  the  crowded  inn  came 
Joseph  and  Mary,  great  with  child,  seeking  a  place  where 
the  child  might  be  born.  But  none  knew  that  it  was 
God,  asking  where  He  might  be  born.  The  rooms  of  the 

3 


Modern  Christianity 


inn  were  full  of  guests  and  there  was  no  place  vacant. 
From  room  to  room  went  Joseph,  seeking  a  place  for 
Mary  in  her  need.  Here  were  rooms  occupied  by  mer- 
chants with  their  precious  goods,  bales  of  silk  from 
Babylon,  spices  and  perfumes  from  Arabia  and  the 
East;  goods,  some  of  which  represented  a  fortune  in  a 
camel's  load.  These  must  be  carefully  guarded  and 
protected  from  the  weather.  They  could  not  be  placed 
outside  among  the  cattle.  Their  owners  could  not 
make  place,  for  it  meant  too  great  a  risk  of  loss,  even 
had  they  been  willing  to  discommode  themselves.  To 
one  after  another  he  went  and  none  would  give 
room. 

But  they  were  not  all  heartless:  here  was  one  who 
would  give  the  money  to  pay  some  one  else  to  leave  his 
room  and  give  it  to  the  poor  woman.  For  himself,  he 
could  not  make  place,  for  his  goodswere  in  this  room  and 
he  in  the  next,  that  he  might  guard  them  well.  He  was 
sorry  that  he  could  do  no  more.  There  were  some  trav- 
ellers who  had  no  goods  and  who  were  hardened  to  the 
weather.  They  surely  would  be  glad  to  take  the  money 
and  make  room  for  the  woman. 

Not  they!  They  had  come  a  long  journey  and  a  hard 
one.  Not  a  night  for  weeks  had  they  spent  beneath  a 
roof  and  for  many  days  they  had  looked  forward  to  this 
night,  when  at  last  they  were  to  sleep  under  cover  and 
rest  in  peace  and  make  merry.  Let  the  merchant  him- 
self make  way,  instead  of  offering  money  for  others  to 
do  so.  They  could  not.  He  slept  every  night  beneath 
a  roof,  but  they  almost  never.  Their  pleasure  and  com- 
fort were  worth  as  much  to  them  as  his  goods  to  him. 
Let  him  make  way.  Or  look!  there  was  a  man  yonder 


The  Birth  of  God  5 

that  always  lived  in  ease  and  comfort.  It  would  do 
him  good  to  sleep  out  for  a  night.  Try  him. 

And  he  ?  No !  Expose  himself  thus  ?  He  dare  not ! 
He  had  been  brought  up  used  to  comfort.  Why,  he 
would  suffer:  no,  not  he!  There  were  surely  others,  who 
were  used  to  sleeping  out  of  doors,  who  could  readily  do 
it,  but  to  him  it  would  be  suffering,  for  he  was  not  used 
to  it. 

And  here  was  a  man  with  his  wife  and  children.  He 
had  worked  hard  to  get  there  in  time  and  to  get  rooms 
for  him  and  them,  that  they  might  have  comfort  and  not 
be  exposed  to  hardships.  Ask  him,  after  he  had  taken 
all  that  pains  and  trouble  for  them,  to  turn  them  out 
with  no  place  to  go,  except  the  dirty  court-yard,  full  of 
beasts  and  cattle,  open  to  the  sky  above?  No!  he  was 
too  good  a  husband  and  too  good  a  father  to  do  that, 
let  me  tell  you !  He  would  work  himself  to  the  bone 
if  need  be,  but  he  was  going  to  provide  the  best  there 
was  for  his  wife  and  children.  If  others  were  careless 
and  shiftless  and  did  not  do  their  part,  it  was  not  fit 
that  his  wife  and  his  children  should  surfer  for  it.  Let 
him  go  to  some  one  who  had  no  family  to  take  care  of. 
There,  right  next,  was  a  single  man,  by  himself. 

And  he?  No,  he  would  not  make  place.  It  was  his 
right  to  have  a  room.  He  had  come  in  time  to  get  it  and 
no  one  should  take  it  from  him.  He  was  very  sorry. 
He  was  ready  to  do  his  part  with  every  one  else,  but  it 
was  not  right  that  he  alone  should  suffer.  He  stood 
on  his  rights. 

Somewhat  thus,  I  imagine,  was  the  story  of  that 
night;  for  men  are  much  the  same  all  the  world  over. 
And  so  it  was  that  God,  asking  to  be  born,  found  no 


6  Modern  Christianity 

man  ready  to  make  place,  for  all  the  rooms  were  occu- 
pied. For  their  wealth  and  for  their  comforts,  all  stood 
on  their  rights  and  on  their  privileges.  Each  thought 
the  other  should  make  place.  And  so  God  was  born 
among  the  beasts  of  burden  in  the  court-yard,  with  the 
sky  for  a  roof,  and  cradled  in  a  manger.  God  so  loved 
the  world  that,  though  none  was  ready  to  make  place 
for  Him,  yet  He  would  be  born  among  men  and  into 
man;  but  man  denied  Him  and  the  beasts  of  burden 
were  His  comrades.  Born  among  the  beasts,  of  whom 
men  made  slaves  for  their  comfort  and  convenience,  He 
came,  the  servant  of  all  mankind,  He,  God  incarnate. 

And  who  first  found  this  King?  St.  Luke  tells  the 
beautiful  and  mystic  tale  of  the  shepherds,  who,  watch- 
ing their  flocks,  saw  the  vision  of  the  angels,  who  told 
them  that  the  Christ  for  whom  men  looked  was  born 
in  Bethlehem,  David's  town,  and  gave  them,  as  the 
only  sign,  that  they  should  find  somewhere  there  in 
Bethlehem  a  baby  in  swaddling  clothes  and  lying  in  a 
manger.  The  poorest,  most  needy  child  that  they 
could  find  in  all  that  town  was  the  King.  That  was 
the  sign. 

All  Israel  was  looking  for  the  King.  Wise  men  stud- 
ied the  books  which  prophesied  His  coming.  Scribes 
and  Pharisees  and  priests,  each  in  his  own  way,  searched 
for  Him.  They  knew  the  marks  which  should  distin- 
guish the  Christ,  a  great  King,  with  wonder-working 
power,  testified  to  by  signs  from  God  Himself.  Who 
found  Him?  In  the  later  story  of  the  Gospels,  it  was 
the  poor  fishermen  about  the  northern  end  of  the 
Sea  of  Galilee  who  recognised  Jesus  as  the  Christ. 
In  this  mystic  story  of  the  birth,  it  was  the  shepherds 


The  Birth  of  God  7 

who  knew  Him,  and  they  knew  Him  by  this  one  sign : 
that  His  birth  was  poorer  and  more  miserable  than 
that  of  any  child  in  Bethlehem. 

There  is  another  mystic  story  which  St.  Matthew 
tells  of  the  finding  of  Christ.  It  is  a  parable  by  which 
the  writer  of  the  Gospel  sets  forth  that  the  Kingdom 
should  pass  from  Israel  to  the  Gentiles,  because  they 
recognised  the  Christ,  where  the  Jews  failed  to 
do  so.  It  is  the  story  of  the  magi,  who,  studying  the 
stars,  according  to  their  ancient  lore,  learned  that 
a  great  King  was  born  in  the  west-land,  and  so 
travelled  westward,  following  by  night  the  star  of 
the  new  Prince  of  Judah  which  went  before  them. 
And  so  these  magi  came  to  the  capital  of  Judah  and  to 
the  palace  of  the  king  to  seek  the  prince  that  should  be 
King.  But  the  Prince  of  the  kingdom  of  Heaven  was 
not  found  in  kings'  houses.  Then  Herod  sent  for  the 
scholars  and  the  doctors  of  the  law,  to  ask  them  where 
the  King  should  be  born,  and  they  told  him  that  the 
King  of  David's  kingdom  should  be  born  in  David's 
city,  Bethlehem,  but  more  they  knew  not.  For  to 
them  the  real  meaning,  the  real  nature  of  His  kingdom, 
had  not  been  revealed.  Ignorant,  simple  shepherds 
had  found  the  King  then,  as  ignorant,  simple  Galilean 
fishermen  were  to  find  Him  later,  because  the  very 
nature  of  their  life  had  kept  them  close  to  the  needs 
of  man.  Their  own  needs  and  their  own  wants  kept 
them  always  tender  to  the  needs  and  wants  of  others. 
They  were  ready  to  be  brothers  in  need  to  one  that 
was  in  need;  and  this  call  of  a  common  humanity 
kept  them  close  to  God. 

But  these  others  had  learned  to  place  wealth,  power, 


8  Modern  Christianity 

social  distinction,  privilege,  first,  and  humanity  after- 
wards. It  was  not  the  man,  but  the  wealth,  the  power, 
the  social  station  of  the  man  which  determined  worth. 
Those  things  were  of  more  value  than  the  humanity 
behind.  They  sought  God  in  those  things  and  not  in 
man  himself. 

Then  the  magi  went  to  search  in  Bethlehem  for  the 
child: — the  nations  of  the  earth  seeking  their  King  in 
the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  finding  Him  not  in 
the  glory  of  Judah,  in  the  power  of  David,  or  the  pomp 
and  magnificence  of  Solomon ;  finding  Him  not  in  the 
law  of  Moses  or  the  poetry  of  the  Psalms  or  the  wisdom 
of  Job;  but  finding  Him  in  Israel  stripped  of  power  and 
prestige,  in  Israel  guileless  and  helpless  among  the 
nations,  without  land  or  power,  a  servant  of  servants. 

And  there  is  the  mystery  and  wonder  of  this  King- 
ship, and  there  the  meaning  of  this  story.  Man  finds 
God,  his  King  and  his  Saviour,  not  in  those  that  can 
give  him  something,  not  in  rank  and  power,  not  in 
those  who  impart  wisdom  to  him  and  give  him  encour- 
agement, not  even  in  those  that  show  him  kindness 
and  love.  He  finds  God,  his  King  and  his  Saviour, 
when  he  has  found  the  one  who,  in  his  helplessness  and 
want,  needs  him.  When  he  has  found  that  one  and  re- 
sponded to  his  appeal,  he  has  found  God,  his  Saviour. 
Then  Jesus,  the  Christ,  is  born  for  him  into  the  world 
and  Christmas-day  becomes  to  him  an  eternal  reality. 

God  is  forever  asking  a  place  that  He  may  be  born 
into  your  life  and  into  mine.  Mary,  great  with  child, 
seeks  a  room  in  your  life  and  in  mine,  in  which  Jesus 
Christ  may  have  His  cradle.  And  too  often  we  are 
blind  as  the  men  of  that  inn  were  blind.  The  rooms 


The  Birth  of  God  9 

of%ur  hearts  are  filled,  as  were  the  rooms  of  the  inn  at 
Bethlehem  that  night. 

There  is  no  place  in  our  life.  We  need  all  we  have  for 
wife  and  children. 

We  have  our  career  to  make  in  the  world,  and  our 
time  and  our  strength  are  needed  for  that.  We  are  go- 
ing to  make  the  world  better  some  day.  We  hope,  at  all 
events,  that  we  are  going  to  win  our  place  in  that  world, 
and  we  cannot  step  out  of  our  room  to  let  a  need  come 
in  which  shall  drag  us  down  into  that  court-yard 
among  the  cattle  and  the  beasts  of  burden. 

Our  life  is  full  of  the  stores  of  goods  which  we  have 
collected,  out  of  which  we  would  make  fortunes,  and 
we  need  all  our  time  and  strength  to  care  for  them. 
The  spirit  of  rivalry  is  in  us,  to  surpass  these  others 
about  us.  Money  we  have,  yes,  and  we  will  give  it,  that 
you  may  buy  a  place  in  some  one's  else  life  for  this 
need,  but  for  ourselves  we  cannot  risk  our  precious 
bales  of  goods  down  there  in  the  muck,  among  the 
camels  and  the  donkeys,  nor  let  some  strangers  that  we 
know  not  take  the  room  next  to  them,  from  which  they 
might  rob  us. 

We,  you  know,  are  people  of  delicate  health  and  deli- 
cate nurture.  We  must  care  for  our  health.  We  have 
so  many  ailments,  the  burden  of  our  flesh  is  so  heavy 
for  us  to  carry  that  we  cannot  risk  exposure  there. 
Yes,  the  case  is  hard,  but  do  you  think  of  us?  Don't 
you  know  what  our  condition  is?  Do  you  talk  to  me 
about  caring  for  others  and  don't  you  know  what  my 
health  is  and  how  I  need  to  receive  all  your  sympathy 
and  all  the  care  that  I  can  get,  instead  of  giving  to 
others  ? 


io  Modern  Christianity 

Or:  Yes,  but  you  know  how  I  was  brought  up.  It  is 
an  easy  thing  for  some  of  these  people  to  go  down  into 
that  muck  among  those  beasts.  They  were  bred  differ- 
ently from  me;  but  you  cannot  expect  me  to  do  it. 

Ahf  dear  hearts,  may  God  grant  each  of  us  on  this 
Christmas-day  a  little  of  that  magic  lotion  of  selfless 
love  that,  if  we  know  it  not  already,  there  may  be  re- 
vealed to  you  and  to  me  the  place  where  Christ,  our 
King,  is  to  be  found.  The  helpless  and  the  needy  one 
(in  what  unexpected  guise  God  comes),  he  is,  for  you 
and  for  me,  the  one  through  whose  agency  God  would 
be  born  into  our  lives. 

Jesus  came  to  turn  the  world  upside  down,  and  there 
is  some  sense  in  the  mediaeval  method  of  celebrating 
Christmas  as  the  feast  of  misrule,  when  the  child  was 
made  king  and  the  fool  was  made  bishop,  and  Church 
and  State  were  for  the  nonce  ruled  by  the  lowest  and 
the  most  foolish  of  all ;  and  yet  not  that  the  world  would 
be  turned  upside  down  by  a  true  recognition  of  the 
meaning  of  Christmas,  in  the  sense  that  lawlessness 
and  misrule  and  folly  would  come  in.  Nay,  it  would 
be  the  rule  of  love,  and  the  most  perfect  and  wisest  of 
all  laws  is  love,  for  love  is  the  law  of  God ;  and  the 
fundamental  nature  of  the  law  of  love  is  that  honour 
and  help  be  given  to  those  who  most  need  it,  because 
they  are  the  poorest  and  the  most  helpless;  that  the 
strongest  and  the  greatest  should  bow  the  knee  and 
worship  at  the  shrine  of  the  weakest  and  the  poorest, 
pouring  out  there  their  gifts  of  gold  and  frankincense 
and  myrrh,  because  it  is  the  poor  and  the  weak  and 
the  foolish  that  have  need  of  those  things. 

Wise  men,  would  ye  find  the  great  King  of  the  new 


The  Birth  of  God  n 

kingdom  of  God  ?  There  He  lies.  You  need  not  go  back 
two  thousand  years.  He  is  here  now.  Bring  to  Him 
your  gifts  of  gold  and  frankincense  and  myrrh.  And 
this  shall  be  the  sign  unto  you, — a  Child,  because  He 
is  the  weakest  and  the  most  foolish ;  wrapped  in  swad- 
dling clothes  and  lying  in  a  manger,  because  He  is 
the  poorest  and  the  meanest,  without  a  house  to  dwell 
in,  like  the  beasts  of  the  field.  And  yet  ye  shall  find 
Him  to  be  greater  than  all  the  kings  of  the  earth ;  for  if 
ye  will  acknowledge  Him  as  your  King,  He  shall  bring 
out  in  you  the  best  and  highest  that  is  in  your  nature, 
and  ye  shall  become  sons  of  God,  serving  but  not 
needing  to  be  served.  Serve  the  weakest,  and  as  ye 
serve  Him  ye  shall  yourselves  become  like  gods,  and 
this  earth  shall  be  changed  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven ; 
for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  the  kingdom  of  love, 
where  he  who  has  gives  to  him  who  has  not,  and  the 
strong  serves  the  weak,  and  there  is  no  having  and  not 
having,  no  strong  and  no  weak,  for  each  in  love  imparts 
what  the  other  lacks. 


SONS  OF  GOD 

ST.  JOHN  i.,  12:  As  many  as  received  him  to  them  gave 
he  power  to  become  the  sons  of  God. 

AGAIN  we  are  come  to  Christmas-day,  when  all  the 
world's  ideas  are  turned  upside  down.  To-day  we 
celebrate  the  birth  of  our  King:  not  in  a  palace,  not  in 
wealth  and  luxury,  not  surrounded  by  pomp  and  power. 
Our  King  was  of  very  doubtful  birth,  born  of  poor  par- 
ents, under  conditions  so  distressful  as  to  be  positively 
indecent;  His  palace,  the  open  court-yard,  reeking  with 
the  filth  of  the  animals  that  crowded  it ;  the  body-guard, 
that  stood  about  His  bed  and  certified  His  birth,  the 
beasts  of  burden  and  the  cattle,  men's  household 
slaves;  the  throne  from  which  He  ruled  His  kingdom, 
the  manger  from  which  those  cattle  fed.  Yes,  surely, 
Christmas  turns  the  world's  ideas  upside  down. 

And  the  life  that  began  in  this  wise  so  continued  to 
its  close,  when  He,  whom  we  proclaim  the  Saviour  of 
the  world,  died  as  a  criminal  on  the  cross.  Born  of 
parents  so  poor,  so  lacking  in  thrift  or  energy  or  fore- 
thought, so  lacking  in  repute  among  their  fellow  men,  so 
pressed  upon  by  their  environment  and  so  little  able  to 
meet  the  conditions  of  that  environment,  that  when  the 
time  of  greatest  need  came  the  baby  was  born  in  the 
filthy  court-yard  of  the  inn,  among  the  beasts  of  burden ! 
So  little  successful  in  His  short  life  in  achieving  place, 

12 


Sons  of  God  13 

distinction,  repute  among  those  who  were  considered 
the  leaders  of  His  people,  that  He  was  put  to  death  as  a 
common  criminal  between  two  thieves  and  murderers 
on  the  cross.  A  strangely  pitiful  and  unsuccessful 
career — and  yet  we  say  that  this  was  the  Son  of  God. 

There  was  a  great  temple  in  Jerusalem,  which  was 
still  in  process  of  reconstruction  at  the  time  when  Christ 
was  born.  It  was  the  centre  of  the  Jewish  faith  and 
nation.  The  traditions  of  the  people  looked  back  to 
the  first  temple  erected  on  that  site  by  Solomon  and 
dwelt  with  delight  on  the  details  of  its  glory  and  its 
wealth.  Solomon  held  a  high  place  in  their  religious 
annals,  as  one  who  had  well  pleased  God  because  he 
built  that  temple.  As  is  the  way  with  such  things,  much 
suffering  was  built  into  its  walls.  To  complete  this 
grand  work,  men  were  torn  from  their  homes  and  com- 
pelled to  work  in  gangs  for  so  many  months  or  so  many 
years.  Their  labour  was  taken  from  their  families,  who 
were  left  to  shift  for  themselves  in  the  meantime,  and 
many  of  them  of  course  sickened  and  some  died  under 
the  conditions  of  such  forced  labour.  Solomon  won  the 
glory  and  renown  of  the  great  work.  It  was  his  wisdom 
that  planned  it,  it  was  his  wealth  that  provided  the  ma- 
terials, it  was  his  power  that  furnished  the  workmen. 
The  oppression  and  exaction,  the  cruelty  and  the  tyr- 
anny connected  with  this  and  his  other  great  construc- 
tions, palaces  and  the  like,  disrupted  the  kingdom. 
He  left  his  son  an  inheritance  of  discontent  and  revolt. 
All  that  men  forgot  in  the  glory  of  the  structure  which 
he  had  erected  for  the  worship  of  God,  and  Solomon 
was  counted  a  benefactor.  The  last  temple,  which 
Herod  built,  was  still  more  beautiful  than  Solomon's 


14  Modern  Christianity 

structure.  The  man  who  murdered  his  own  beloved 
wife,  who  in  jealous  rage  executed  his  own  children; 
the  man  who  is  execrated  in  Jewish  and  Christian 
story  alike  for  his  massacres  of  men  and  women  and 
little  children,  built,  partly  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  own 
pride,  partly  to  win  the  suffrages  of  the  Jews,  partly  out 
of  a  desire  to  make  his  peace  with  God,  a  temple  which 
was  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  world,  and  the  pride  of 
the  Jewish  race  and  religion. 

These  are  the  things  that  men  count  great.  The  op- 
pression, the  cruelty,  the  misdeeds,  the  death  of  the 
innocent  and^the  suffering  of  the  down-trodden  working- 
folk  are  forgotten,  in  the  world's  thought,  in  the  benefits 
which  the  world  derives  from  the  deeds  and  the  con- 
structions of  such  men.  Their  temples  and  cathedrals, 
their  hospitals  and  asylums,  their  schools  and  colleges, 
their  endowments  of  research  and  education,  make 
them  great  in  men's  minds. 

According  to  an  old  Christian  tradition,  the  veil  of 
that  temple  which  Herod  built  was  rent  in  twain  when 
Christ  died  on  the  cross.  A  new  order  had  come  in  with 
Jesus  Christ.  The  temple  for  the  indwelling  of  God  was 
man.  Man  as  man  was  exalted  to  a  new  place.  In  him 
God  was  revealed.  There  was  no  room  for  the  old  order. 
No  buildings,  however  beautiful,  whose  foundations 
rested  on  the  sorrow  and  suffering  of  men,  could  contain 
the  majesty  of  God  or  show  forth  God  to  men. 

Christmas,  the  birth  feast  of  Jesus,  is  the  exaltation 
of  humanity,  quite  apart  from  all  accidents  of  birth  or 
wealth,  quite  apart  from  all  acquirements  of  culture  and 
learning,  quite  apart  even  from  all  achievements  and  dis- 
tinctions, of  countries  conquered,  of  kingdoms  founded, 


Sons  of  God  15 

of  laws  framed,  of  the  mysteries  of  nature  unfolded 
and  the  forces  of  nature  harnessed  and  bridled  in  man's 
service.  Not  that  these  things  have  not  their  place  in 
the  economy  of  God's  plan,  but  that  the  final  revelation 
of  God  does  not  consist  in  these  things.  Behind  them 
and  beyond  them  is  a  something  else  which  constitutes 
the  essence  of  divinity,  by  which  power  is  given  to  as 
many  as  receive  Him  to  become  the  sons  of  God.  He 
was  God's  revelation  of  the  power  of  love,  a  power 
which  exceeds  all  else.  By  love  and  by  love  only  the 
world  can  be  remade,  for  by  love  the  world  was  made, 
not,  as  man  fancied,  by  a  commandment  of  power,  but 
by  a  breath  of  love.  In  the  birth  of  Jesus  was  revealed 
that  which  had  been  from  the  beginning.  He  was  in 
the  world  and  the  world  was  made  by  Him  and  the 
world  knew  Him  not.  Love  was  the  power  by  which 
the  world  had  been  made.  But  men  did  not  under- 
stand this.  They  were  looking  for  something  else  as 
the  power  of  God  and  the  manifestation  of  God,  as  the 
divine  essence  and  the  divine  being.  Only  a  few  here 
and  there  dimly  perceived  the  truth.  This  light  had 
been  in  the  world  always  and  it  had  lighted  men  from 
the  beginning;  but  the  great  bulk  of  men  seemed  to 
love  darkness  rather  than  light. 

The  story  of  the  birth  of  Christ  is  full  of  a  mystical 
significance.  God  came  appealing  through  the  need  of 
a  woman  and  an  unborn  child  to  men  and  women  of  the 
same  blood,  bound  to  them  by  the  ties  of  a  sacred  re- 
ligion, which,  while  setting  them  apart  from  other  men, 
laid  upon  them  a  special  obligation  to  care  each  for  the 
other.  He  came  in  the  appeal  of  supreme  need :  a  wo- 
man whose  child  was  to  be  born  looking  for  a  place  to 


16  Modern  Christianity 

bring  it  forth ; — and  no  one  would  make  place.  Each 
was  so  wrapped  up  in  his  own  selfishness  and  his  own 
needs,  each  was  so  bound  to  maintain  his  own  rights 
and  his  own  privileges,  that  none  would  abandon  his 
room  in  the  inn  that  God  might  be  born  there.  He 
came  unto  His  own  and  His  own  knew  Him  not. 

The  inn  is  the  life  of  man  in  which  the  love  of  God 
must  be  born,  and  that  love  of  God  comes  to  the  life  of 
each  man,  appealing  for  room  to  be  born.  It  asks  man 
to  give  up  the  room  which  self  habits  in  his  life,  that 
the  mother  of  God  may  come  in ;  for  love  can  be  born 
only  where  self  maketh  place.  But  self  says:  I  cannot 
make  place,  for  this  is  my  room.  I  have  come  first  to 
the  inn.  I  have  here  the  right.  Hath  this  woman  so 
great  need?  But  why  hath  she  been  so  shiftless  and  so 
thriftless?  Why  at  this  time  should  she  be  demanding 
place?  Why  was  not  provision  made  for  her  need  in 
advance?  Surely  it  would  be  but  to  encourage  beggary 
and  thriftlessness,  if  when  one  cometh  like  this  and 
maketh  claim  of  great  need  I  should  give  up  that  which 
is  mine,for  which  I  have  laboured  and  fought  and  toiled. 
Nay,  surely  that  cannot  help  but  rather  hinder.  Truly, 
she  undergoeth  hardship,  but  it  is  through  her  own 
fault  that  the  hardship  is  come  upon  her.  Self  hath 
many  things  to  say,  many  reasons  why  it  cannot  make 
place,  and  he  who  listeneth  to  the  voice  of  self  can  never 
know  God,  because  he  maketh  no  room  in  his  life  for 
the  Son  of  God.  But  he  who  thrusteth  self  out  al- 
together, who  counteth  nothing  in  comparison  with 
the  need  of  another,  to  him  is  God  revealed  and  to  him 
power  is  given  to  become  a  son  of  God. 

Christmas  is  the  exaltation  of  our  humanity  in  the 


Sons  of  God  17 

birth  of  God  in  Jesus.  That  is  the  eternal  lesson  of 
Christmas-day:  the  power  that  is  within  you  and  me  to 
become  sons  of  God  through  the  birth  of  love  divine  in 
our  hearts,  and  the  impossibility  of  truly  knowing  God 
or  serving  God  by  anything  except  surrender  of  our- 
selves. Through  love  was  the  creation  of  the  world. 
Love  is  the  light  that  lighteneth  men  in  the  darkness  of 
this  world  of  sin  and  sorrow.  Love  incarnate  in  man  is 
the  highest  revelation  of  God  to  man,  the  eternal  Son 
of  God,  and  that  love  showing  itself  in  the  poorest  and 
most  needy  exalts  him  above  kings  and  priests. 

To  some  small  degree  Christianity  has  touched  and 
changed  the  world  since  that  first  Christmas-day. 
Feebly  we  have  begun  to  apprehend  Christ;  and  on  each 
Christmas-day  there  seems  to  come  a  new  breath  of  love 
from  heaven,  enlightening  us,  making  us  see  more  as 
God  sees:  that  to  make  others  happy,  to  give,  not  to  re- 
ceive, is  the  true  joy  of  life.  A  little  glimpse  of  heaven 
we  earthlings  catch  at  the  Christmas  tide.  Ah!  dear 
hearts,  why  can  you  and  I  not  keep  the  gate  of  heaven 
open  this  far  at  least  through  all  the  year?  God  bless 
you  to-day  with  the  Christmas  love  and  may  the  Christ- 
mas spirit  go  with  you  through  the  year  that  lies  be- 
yond. And  as  you  seek  communion  with  God  through 
Christ  at  yonder  altar  to-day,  may  you  indeed  so  know 
and  receive  the  true  Christ  that  you  may  become  the 
sons  of  God.  May  self  go  out,  and  God  come  in. 


THE  GLORY  OF  GOD 

ST.  LUKE  ii.,  10:  Behold,  I  bring  you  good  tidings  of  great 
joy. 

THIS  season  of  the  year  was  a  time  of  great  merry- 
making among  the  Romans,  the  time  of  the  satur- 
nalia. 1 1  was  also  a  festival  time  among  the  Druids ;  and 
the  religion  of  not  a  few  northern  peoples  consecrated 
the  period  of  the  winter  solstice  to  feasting,  and  even 
to  license.  For  now  the  days  begin  to  lengthen,  the  sun 
starts  on  its  journey  northward  again,  a  promise  that 
darkness  shall  soon  give  way  to  light,  that  barrenness 
and  death  shall  yield  to  fertility  and  life.  Have  you 
ever  waited  for  sunrise,  watched  for  its  coming,  when 
you  were  eager  for  the  day,  when  darkness  meant  danger 
and  fear?  You  and  I,  who  sleep  in  our  well-guarded 
houses  under  the  conditions  of  modern  life,  largely  lose 
touch  with  nature.  To  many,  if  not  most  of  us,  it  is 
rather  a  source  of  regret  that  daylight  comes.  1 1  means 
that  we  must  leave  our  sleep,  leave  our  rest,  leave  our 
peace  and  quiet  and  commence  the  toilsome  round  of 
life  once  more.  We  never,  or  almost  never,  see  the  sun 
rise.  Night  has  no  horror  to  us  personally  and  individu- 
ally; it  is  not  a  hideous  thing.  Our  streets  are  lighted; 
in  fact  some  of  them  are  more  beautiful  by  night  than 
by  day. 

It  is  a  different  thing  when  you  live  close  to  nature. 

18 


The  Glory  of  God  19 

To  primitive  man  night  is  the  time  of  danger  and  dread. 
Then  the  wild  beasts  roam;  hidden  and  mysterious  dan- 
gers are  all  about.  He  who  lives  in  a  land  where  there 
are  no  streets  knows  also  no  lights  to  lighten  the  dark- 
ness of  the  night  and  drive  away  its  peril. 

I  have  travelled  through  the  desert  at  night  by  the 
side  of  jungles  full  of  wild  beasts.  All  around  jackals 
cried,  hyenas  laughed,  and  the  native  guides  and  guards 
whispered  of  danger  from  the  lions.  Wolves  also  and 
lynxes  and  wild  boars  there  were  and,  more  dangerous 
than  any  of  these  four-footed  beasts,  an  occasional 
troop  of  Arabs  on  a  night  foray.  Once  our  guide  lost 
his  way.  It  was  pitch  dark;  there  were  no  landmarks 
to  be  seen.  There  was  danger  that  the  caravan  mi^ht 
become  scattered  in  the  desert  and  men,  goods,  and 
beasts  be  lost,  and,  to  add  to  the  danger  and  confusion, 
the  night  air  was  bitterly  cold,  and  mind  and  body  were 
half  numbed  with  the  chill.  Oh !  how  welcome  was  that 
faint  glow  of  light  in  the  east,  which  increased  and  in- 
creased until  we  could  see  one  another  and  the  country 
about  us.  Then  the  wild  beasts  began  to  slink  into 
their  hiding-places,  dangers  vanished.  The  faint  glow 
changed  into  the  blush  of  dawn ;  the  pale  pink  gave  way 
to  a  golden  glory ;  and,  as  we  topped  a  hill,  suddenly  the 
sun  shot  up  in  all  its  splendour. 

He  who  has  lived  through  such  things  will  have  the 
deepest  sympathy  with  that  worship  which  men  in  old 
times  paid  the  sun.  Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  sun 
to  them  was  the  emblem  of  God's  glory  and  of  God's 
power,  dispelling  darkness,  driving  away  danger,  guid- 
ing men's  feet  in  the  way  of  peace  ?  And  then  how  men 
depended  upon  the  sun!  When  it  moved  southward  all 


20  Modern  Christianity 

nature  died.  The  earth  grew  hard  and  sterile;  there 
were  no  fruits;  it  was  a  time  of  want  and  discomfort. 
But  when  the  sun  came  back  again,  warming  with  its 
rays  the  surface  of  the  earth,  all  nature  sprang  once 
more  into  life.  Plants  and  trees  yielded  their  fruit; 
for  man  and  beast  there  was  abundance. 

But  what  has  this  to  do  with  Christmas-day?  Why 
this :  the  early  Christian  fathers  were  wisely  sympathetic 
with  the  spiritual  yearnings  and  with  the  religion  of 
their  heathen  ancestors.  They  took  the  old  feast  at  the 
time  of  the  winter  solstice,  when  the  days  begin  to 
lengthen  and  the  sun  is  starting  northward,  and  turned 
it  into  the  feast  of  the  birth  of  Christ.  It  is  as  though 
they  said  to  those  heathen  religions:  Ye  do  well  to  see 
the  glory  of  God  in  that  which  brings  you  blessing:  ye  do 
well  to  see  God  manifested  in  His  creatures;  and  surely 
there  is  nothing  in  heaven  or  earth,  of  the  things  which 
He  has  made,  more  wonderful,  more  glorious,  and  more 
helpful  to  man  than  the  sun  in  the  heavens; — and  yet 
the  glory  of  God  as  revealed  in  this,  His  creature,  is  not 
to  be  compared  with  the  glory  of  God  which  He  hath  re- 
vealed in  His  Son,  Jesus  Christ.  Whom  ye  ignorantly 
worshipped,  Him  we  show  unto  you.  The  sun  rising  in 
the  heavens  dispels  darkness  and  drives  away  danger, 
and  the  warmth  of  its  rays  brings  life  to  the  earth;  but 
Jesus  Christ  reveals  God  in  the  hearts  of  men,  driving 
darkness  out  of  their  lives,  bringing  love  into  the  world. 
Is  it  wonderful  that  Jesus  was  called  the  Sun  of  right- 
eousness, with  healing  on  His  wings?  But  more  than 
this:  Christmas-day  tells  the  world  that  nothing  in  crea- 
tion can  compare  with  man  himself;  he  is  above  and  be- 
yond creation,  because  he  is  the  son  of  God.  The  glory 


The  Glory  of  God  21 

of  God  is  revealed  in  man  as  it  is  not  revealed  in  any  of 
the  outward  creation.  When  the  glory  of  the  Lord  shone 
round  about  the  shepherds  and  the  angels  brought  them 
good  tidings  of  great  joy  to  all  people,  those  tidings  were 
that  in  man  God  is  born ;  that  man  is  divine,  and  that  in 
him  is  expressed  the  glory  of  God,  as  it  is  not  expressed 
in  the  created  things  of  God's  universe,  however 
wonderful  they  may  be. 

Now  how  was  God  shown  to  man  ?  Not  in  a  king's 
palace,  not  in  some  great  ruler  of  the  nations,  not  in 
some  famous  warrior,  not  in  some  successful  man  of 
business,  not  in  the  form  of  some  wonderful  poet  or  wise 
philosopher,  but  as  a  helpless  baby,  a  child  of  poor  par- 
ents, born  under  most  doubtful  conditions  in  a  manger 
in  the  little  town  of  Bethlehem.  We  can  never  know 
Jesus  Christ,  the  Babe  of  Bethlehem,  we  can  never  com- 
prehend the  real  meaning  of  Christmas  until  we  under- 
stand the  divinity  of  human  life,  until  we  realise  the 
divinity  which  is  in  every  baby  that  is  born,  in  the  house 
of  the  rich,  or  the  house  of  the  poor,  in  the  house  of  the 
famous,  or  the  house  of  the  obscure,  in  the  palace,  the 
almshouse  or  the  prison ;  until  we  realise  the  divinity 
that  lies  in  our  humanity,  that  it  is  not  the  place  or  the 
name  or  the  race,  but  the  little  human  baby  itself  which 
is  divine.  Because  it  is  a  child  of  man,  therefore  it  is  a 
child  of  God.  We  are  set  apart  from  all  creation,  from 
the  things  that  have  life  and  the  things  that  have  not 
life,  by  the  divine  that  is  within  us.  That  is  the  good 
tidings  of  great  joy  which  the  angels  brought  to  all  man- 
kind when  Jesus  Christ,  the  child  of  Mary,  was  born  in 
the  manger  in  Bethlehem.  Shepherds,  peasants  from 
the  field,  came  and  bowed  down  and  worshipped  the 


22  Modern  Christianity 

child;  wise  and  rich  men,  from  the  distant  east,  came 
and  bowed  down  and  worshipped  the  child.  Beautiful 
stories  these,  and  full  of  meaning.  Wherever  humanity 
remains  true  to  the  best  that  is  in  it,  it  will  love  and  rev- 
erence and  worship  the  helpless  babe.  When  the  baby 
no  longer  appeals  to  it,  something  is  wrong  with  human- 
ity; something  is  wrong  with  the  heart  of  the  man  or 
the  woman  to  whom  the  helpless  child  does  not  appeal. 
And  here  is  another  side  of  that  divinity  which  is  in  hu- 
manity. The  baby  appeals  to  us  because  it  is  helpless, 
because  it  can  do  nothing  for  itself;  it  can  give  nothing 
to  you,  it  asks  everything  from  you.  It  does  not  know 
your  position ;  it  is  nothing  to  it  that  you  are  rich  or  that 
you  are  poor,  that  you  are  famous  or  that  you  are  un- 
known, that  you  are  beautiful  or  that  you  are  ugly. 
It  knows  you  as  one  who  can  serve  it  and  as  nothing 
else,  it  appeals  to  you  for  your  service,  and  by  doing 
that  it  appeals  to  the  best  that  is  in  you. 

The  story  of  Christ's  birth,  beautiful  in  legend  and  in 
art,  is  in  fact  a  pitiful  story,  some  would  say:  a  child  of 
parents  so  shiftless  or  so  poor  that  when  He  was  born 
He  had  no  roof  over  His  head.  Of  Jewish  origin,  He  was 
the  victim  of  foreign  rule.  1 1  was  the  behest  of  the  con- 
queror which  compelled  His  parents  to  leave  their  home 
at  such  a  time  and  travel  several  days'  journey  to  a  dis- 
tant town.  By  tradition  of  ancient  royal  family,  that 
family  had  gradually  sunk  to  a  very  low  estate.  What 
prospect  and  what  outlook  in  the  world  for  Him  ?  And 
yet  He  was  the  very  God  incarnate?  In  Him  was  re- 
vealed the  glory  of  God  and  His  birth  was  good  tidings 
of  great  joy  to  all  mankind. 

God  is  born  into  the  world  out  of  the  need  and  misery 


The  Glory  of  God  23 

and  want  of  men.  The  need  of  man  is  the  mother,  but 
God  Almighty  is  the  father.  We  commemorate  on 
Christmas-day  the  mystery  of  the  wonderful,  infinite 
love  of  God,  which  makes  marriage  with  the  want  of 
men,  so  that  out  of  man's  direst  need,  through  the  love 
of  God,  a  divine  child  is  born,  made  flesh  to  be  the  Sa- 
viour of  man,  his  Redeemer  from  want  and  sin.  And 
what  is  true  of  the  world  is  true  of  each  man  in  the  world. 
The  birth  of  Christ  in  the  heart  of  man  is  a  birth  Whose 
mother  is  suffering  and  misery,  often  times  the  suffering 
and  misery  and  even  the  sin  of  that  man  himself,  but 
the  Father  is  God. 

Another  thought  connects  itself  with  the  story  of  that 
birth.  When  to  that  inn  in  Bethlehem  came  Joseph  and 
Mary ;  for  the  woman  in  her  hour  of  need  no  place  could 
be  found.  All  the  rooms  were  full.  None  would  make 
place.  Had  any  known  that  it  was  God  seeking  for  a 
place,  do  you  not  think  they  would  have  yielded  their 
own  place  to  Him?  But  they  could  not  see  God  coming 
in  the  need  of  that  poor  man,  and  that  poor  woman 
with  her  child  unborn.  And  so  each  of  those  people  in 
the  inn  that  night  lost  the  great  opportunity.  The  world 
is  like  that  inn,  in  that  God  comes  to  our  doors  begging 
for  a  place  to  be  born.  As  He  came  then  to  the  people 
in  the  inn,  so  He  comes  now  to  us,  in  the  form  of  human 
need.  He  comes  in  squalor,  asking  us  to  make  room, 
and  we  do  not  see  that  it  is  God.  The  Son  of  God  can 
find  place  for  His  birth  in  the  heart  of  any  man  and 
become  the  Saviour  of  that  man  only  through  incon- 
venience and  loss  and  sacrifice  on  the  part  of  that 
man:  only  thus  is  God  revealed  to  man. 

We  come,  as  it  were,  to  the  cradle  of  Jesus  to-day,  we 


24  Modern  Christianity 

stand  in  loving  reverence  and  tenderness  there  and  pray 
for  communion  with  God  through  the  Baby  of  Bethle- 
hem. 1 1  is  a  tale  which  has  touched  the  hearts  of  men 
the  world  over,  and  those  who  are  careless  at  other  times 
are  standing  now  about  the  cradle,  reverently,  feeling 
the  presence  of  divinity.  There  is  something  in  their 
hearts  which  causes  them  to  be  kindly,  merciful,  loving 
forgiving,  charitable,  as  they  were  not  erstwhile, 
thoughtful  of  the  joy  and  comfort  of  others,  ready  to 
give  to  make  others,  and,  above  all,  little  children,  glad 
at  this  time,  as  they  are  not  ready  to  give  at  other  times. 
But  it  is  one  thing  merely  to  go  out  of  our  rooms  into 
the  comfortless  court  and  look  at  the  babe  in  the  manger 
and  give  gifts  to  shelter  and  clothe  and  feed  it  there. 
It  is  another  thing  to  surrender  our  room  to  that  babe, 
to  take  it,  unborn,  as  our  guest,  to  make  place  for  the 
mother  to  bear  it;  to  cherish  that  child  in  our  own 
heart  and  life,  to  make  place  for  it  there,  to  put  self 
out  that  it  may  come  in ;  and  yet  that  must  be  done  if 
we  would  enter  into  the  fulness  of  the  great  joy  the 
angels  proclaimed. 

To  each  of  us  comes  the  mother  of  God  that  is  to  be, 
in  her  need, seeking  a  place  where  her  child  may  be  born. 
May  God  open  our  eyes  and  our  minds  and  our  hearts, 
if  by  chance  we  have  been  tempted  to  refuse  her  shelter, 
failing  to  see  in  her  the  mother  of  our  Lord. 


r 


THE  ECHO  OF  THE  CROSS 

ST.  LUKE  ii.,  32:  A  light  to  lighten  the  Gentiles. 

IN  the  Bavarian  Tyrol  there  is  a  beautiful  lake  called 
Konigssee.  The  waters  are  blue  like  the  heavens 
of  God,  while  all  around  rise  mighty  mountains  piled 
peak  on  peak,  like  towers  of  Babel  climbing  into  the  very 
dwelling  place  of  the  Almighty.  On  a  perfect  summer 
day  a  little  party  was  rowed  across  that  lake,  a  paradise 
of  quiet  beauty  in  the  midst  of  a  universe  of  mountain 
grandeur.  Reaching  a  certain  spot  our  guide  halted  the 
boat,  calling  on  us  to  keep  still,  and  fired  an  ancient 
blunderbuss  of  a  weapon  in  the  air.  When  the  noise 
of  the  explosion  had  died  away,  for  an  instant  there  was 
silence.  Then  from  a  far-off  mountain-side  a  cannon 
boomed  forth.  This  was  answered  by  another  and 
another  and  another,  always  rising  higher,  until  there 
seemed  to  be  a  battle  in  the  heavens,  rolling  nearer  and 
nearer.  At  last  above  our  heads  there  burst  a  deafening 
peal  of  thunder.  And  all  this  was  only  the  echo  of  that 
first  puny  pistol  shot. 

Like  this  the  birth  of  Christ  has  echoed  through  the 
world.  A  tiny,  helpless  babe,  born  under  pitiful  condi- 
tions, in  a  manger  at  Bethlehem.  The  little  babe  grew 
through  childhood  to  manhood,  and  up  to  his  thirtieth 
year,  as  boy  and  man,  he  lived  the  life  of  an  humble  ar- 
tisan in  the  insignificant  town  of  Nazareth.  Then  He 

25 


26  Modern  Christianity 

gave  up  His  trade  and  for  a  couple  of  brief  years 
wandered  through  the  countryside  doing  works  of 
mercy,  speaking  words  of  love  and  truth.  The  rulers 
of  the  people  seized  him  and  condemned  Him  to  die 
the  death  of  a  criminal.  Three  crosses  set  on  Calvary! 
Between  two  thieves  upon  the  middle  cross,  Jesus 
crucified  speaks  the  words:  "It  is  finished." 

The  pistol  shot  had  been  fired  in  Palestine,  and  a 
little  company  of  men  and  women  had  heard  its  sound. 
Then  all  was  silence.  But  now,  hark!  The  mountains 
of  the  Gentiles  echo  the  sound;  louder  and  louder  it  re- 
sounds. Land  answers  land.  The  echo  swells  to  a  deaf- 
ening roar,  fast  filling  the  world;  from  north  to  south, 
from  east  to  west,  louder  and  louder,  wider  and  still 
wider,  the  ever  gathering  sound  echoes  and  re-echoes. 
And  the  end  is  not  yet,  for  at  the  last,  from  clouds  and 
great  glory  shall  burst  that  final  thunder  peal  of  His 
name,  girdling  the  earth  with  its  sound,  swelling  wide 
from  pole  to  pole. 

How  sweet  is  that  old  story  of  the  angels  singing  to 
shepherds  their  hymn  of  "  Glory  to  God  in  the  Highest, " 
because  peace  and  good-will  had  been  born  among  men. 
In  mystic  strain  it  tells  the  truth  that  God  is  nearest  to 
those  whose  lives  are  unworldly,  because  of  their  very 
lowliness  and  humility.  That  is  the  Christmas  tale. 
Then,  in  similar  mystic  strain,  we  are  told  how  He  who 
was  born  was  born  not  for  the  Jews  alone  and  not  only 
for  the  humble  and  lowly,  but  that  He  might  be  a  light 
to  lighten  all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  and  that  He 
might  teach  men  of  power  and  wealth  by  self-conquest 
and  abnegation  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God.  Wise 
men  came  from  distant  lands  to  bow  before  the  new-born 


The  Echo  of  the  Cross  27 

King  and  honour  Him  with  gifts  and  oblations.  It  is  a 
beautiful  picture  of  what  His  life  should  mean  to  the 
world,  all  nations  hailing  Him  as  King,  consecrating 
their  power  and  their  treasures  to  His  service,  to  find  in 
Him  their  Saviour  and  Redeemer.  The  song  of  the  an- 
gels to  the  shepherds  of  Judaea  found  its  chorus  when  the 
gentile  world  took  up  the  refrain,  echoing  forth  the  glad 
tidings  of  peace,  good-will  to  men ;  and  that  choir  of  the 
nations  shall  grow  and  grow  until  all  the  world  shall 
have  joined  its  ranks  and  the  song  of  the  angels  become 
a  myriad  voice  of  thunder,  pealing  through  every  ear 
to  the  heart  and  life  of  each  son  of  man. 

But  one  may  well  say:  the  picture  which  you  paint  is 
an  attractive  one  and  we  would  fain  believe  it  true,  but 
how  can  we  reconcile  its  presentation  with  the  actual 
facts  of  our  experience?  It  is  true  that  the  religion  of 
Christ  is  professed  to-day  by  many  millions  of  men  and 
that,  so  far  as  what  is  called  civilisation  and  so  far  as 
material  strength  are  concerned,  Christianity  dominates 
the  world ;  but  there  is  very  little  peace  and  good-will  in 
that  Christianity.  All  Europe  is  professedly  Christian, 
with  the  exception  of  Turkey.  Officially  every  Euro- 
pean nation  recognises  Christ  and  professes  allegiance  to 
His  faith  and  teaching;  but  how  much  peace  and  good 
will  is  there  in  Europe?  Christian  governments  are 
plotting  and  scheming,  each  against  the  other,  lying 
and  cheating,  robbing  or  over-reaching  one  another.  In 
Russia,  in  the  name  of  Christ,  guided  and  directed  by 
priests  and  bishops  of  the  Christian  Church,  Christians 
have  robbed  and  murdered  and  outraged  thousands  of 
poor  unoffending  fellow  men  and  women,  because  they 
did  not  profess  the  name  of  Christ  or  because,  professing 


28  Modern  Christianity 

it,  they  did  not  accept  all  the  doctrines  which  the  ruling 
and  priestly  classes  associated  with  that  name.  The 
Czar  of  Russia  rules  in  the  name  of  Christ  as  head  both 
of  Church  and  State,  and  this  professed  head  of  the 
Church  of  Christ  in  Russia,  or  men  acting  in  his  name, 
so  shamelessly  robbed  and  horribly  oppressed  his  fellow 
men  and  women  that,  in  sheer  desperation,  the  poor 
victims  rose  in  blind  fury  to  commit  against  their  op- 
pressors crimes  almost  as  atrocious  as  those  under  which 
they  had  so  long  suffered. 

In  our  own  land,  which  God  has  so  wonderfully  blessed, 
the  land  which  we  proclaim  to  be  the  land  of  freedom, 
where  there  may  be  no  tyranny  and  oppression  of  one 
by  another,  where  each  shall  have  the  right,  according 
to  the  convictions  of  his  conscience,  to  work  out  his  life 
for  himself,  free  from  the  trammels  of  autocrat  or  hier- 
arch,  where  the  very  fact  that  we  have  not  introduced 
religion  formally  into  our  Constitution  has  made  us,  as 
we  fondly  claim,  the  most  Christian  of  all  nations,  how 
are  peace  and  good-will  manifested  in  our  dealings  with 
one  another?  Is  not  our  life  the  same  old  hideous  strug- 
gle, as  of  so  many  wild  beasts,  for  wealth  and  place  and 
pleasure,  each  striving  to  get  what  he  can  for  himself 
or  to  hold  what  he  has  gotten  with  small  regard  for  the 
rights  of  others,  except  as  he  is  compelled  by  superior 
force  to  recognise  those  rights? 

For  evidence  of  the  evil  in  our  political  life  you  have 
but  to  pick  up  the  daily  papers  to  see  that  in  nation, 
state,  and  city  corruption  and  dishonest  partisanship 
run  riot.  Places  in  the  Senate,  the  highest  council  of 
the  nation,  are  bought  for  money,  and  senators  use  their 
power  shamelessly  to  promote  dishonest  and  nefarious 


The  Echo  of  the  Cross  29 

schemes  for  the  enrichment  of  their  friends,  their  parti- 
sans, and  themselves,  at  the  expense  of  the  public.  Men 
are  appointed  to  office  in  the  State,  not  to  render  service 
to  the  people  and  protect  the  interests  of  those  who  can- 
not protect  themselves,  but  that  they  may  connive  at 
or  assist  corrupt  and  dishonest  men  in  plundering  the 
public  by  means  of  insurance  companies,  trust  compan- 
ies, banks,  and  the  like.  The  leaders  of  the  business 
world,  the  presidents  and  directors  of  the  great  railroads, 
and  the  trusts  of  various  kinds  are  accused  of  corrupting 
public  officials  and  leaders  and  of  violating  the  laws 
of  the  land  for  their  own  profit  or  to  satisfy  the  greed  of 
those  whom  they  represent.  Lawyers  sell  themselves 
to  the  highest  bidder,  prostituting  their  high  calling 
and  their  talents  to  the  service  of  the  men  who  seek 
means  to  rob  the  people  and  break  the  law  without  in- 
curring its  penalties.  Society  is  so  corrupt  that  it  con- 
dones these  frauds  and  honours  and  bows  down  to  the 
men  who  have  made  their  millions,  not  only  not  accord- 
ing to  the  laws  of  Christ's  kingdom,  by  peace  and  good- 
will toward  men,  but  even  in  flagrant  violation  of  those 
principles  of  right  and  justice  which  were  recognised  as 
binding  even  by  the  old  heathen  world.  And  as  for  our 
press,  we  find  hundreds  of  venal  papers  which,  for  con- 
siderations of  money,  for  advertisements,  or  for  political 
reasons,  protect  and  sustain  dishonesty,  suppressing 
facts,  publishing  false  news,  gulling  and  beguiling  the 
people.  Who  does  not  see  about  him  in  this  Christian 
land  and  Christian  community,  in  his  own  immediate 
circle  of  Christian  friends,  the  ravages  of  social  and  per- 
sonal vice — drunkenness,  immorality,  malice,  dis- 
honesty? How  few  men  and  women  there  are  in  this 


30  Modern  Christianity 

great  city  of  ours,  with  its  numerous  Christian  churches, 
who  bear  the  burden  of  the  work  for  God  and  His  Christ. 
Take  the  lists  of  your  societies  for  benevolent,  philan- 
thropic, civic,  social  work,  for  betterment  of  any  sort; 
read  over  these  lists  of  officers,  directors,  and  active 
members.  See  how  the  same  names  occur  again  and 
again  and  how  ridiculously  few,  in  comparison  to  the  size 
of  the  Christian  community,  are  those  who  are  awake  in 
these  regards  to  their  Christian  responsibilities.  What 
is  the  relation  of  employer  and  employed  among  us? 
Is  it  love  and  peace  and  good-will  which  cause  labour 
troubles,  strikes,  lockouts,  which  array  employers  and 
employees  against  one  another  in  a  hostility  almost 
as  clearly  pronounced  as  that  of  the  armed  nations  of 
Europe  one  toward  the  other?  This  is  the  picture  which 
is  unfolded  before  the  eyes  of  any  thinking  man  who 
reads  the  literature  of  to-day — books,  magazines,  papers 
—who  moves  among  men  and  is  forced  to  confront  the 
problems  of  every-day  life.  It  is  because  of  these  con- 
ditions that  you  will  often  hear  these  men  saying: 
What  has  your  Christianity  done,  how  has  it  bettered 
the  conditions  of  the  heathen  world  ?  The  life  of  Christ 
was  beautiful,  but  where  is  the  life  of  Christ  lived  to-day 
among  those  who  profess  His  name,  and  what  influence 
have  His  life  and  death  produced  in  reality  upon  the 
world  ? 

Look  back  one  moment  and  consider  the  conditions 
which  prevailed  before  Christ  came.  I  do  not  ask  you 
to  consider  the  savage  condition  of  man,  living  like  a 
brute;  rather  examine  the  condition  of  man  in  the  most 
civilised  nations  and  ages  of  the  old  world.  Go  to  Egypt 
and  Babylonia.  Vast  and  splendid  ruins  attest  the  an- 


The  Echo  of  the  Cross  31 

cient  wealth  and  luxury  of  those  lands.  We  enter  their 
buried  palaces  and  tombs  and  behold  depicted  on  the 
walls  scenes  from  the  triumphs  of  kings,  or  see  portrayed 
there  the  construction  of  mighty  monuments.  Hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  slaves,  captives  from  other  lands, 
or  levies  from  the  "beasts  of  the  people"  toil  without 
pay  and  without  reward  beneath  the  lash  of  the  task- 
master. We  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  condition  of  the  great 
bulk  of  mankind  in  those  days,  oppressed,  trampled  un- 
der foot,  their  lives  lives  of  cruel  toil  at  the  behest  and 
beneath  the  rod  of  the  rich  and  powerful.  There  was 
no  care  nor  respect  for  the  individual  man  if  he  were 
poor  or  belonged  to  a  foreign  people.  The  lot  of  the 
great  masses  of  mankind  was  hopeless,  forced  labour. 
Human  beings  of  the  lower  ranks  of  society  were  placed 
in  the  same  category  in  which  we  of  to-day  reckon  horses 
and  oxen.  Those  splendid  palaces,  those  pyramids  and 
temples  and  hanging  gardens,  were  founded  on  the 
corpses  of  men  and  women  and  little  children,  and  the 
sorrows  of  nations  cemented  their  walls.  We  unearth 
the  records  of  the  ancient  rulers  of  these  lands  and  read 
a  story  of  cruelties  which  might  well  make  our  blood 
run  cold:  men  flayed  alive,  hundreds  of  human  beings 
impaled  on  stakes  around  a  captured  city,  kings  de- 
lighting to  blind,  with  their  own  hands,  their  captured 
rivals ;  prisoners  caged  with  beasts  and  hung  up  at  the 
city  gates;  whole  cities  and  regions  of  country  devas- 
tated by  a  universal  massacre,  accompanied  with  in- 
describable outrage  and  torture.  This  is  but  a  tithe 
of  the  horrors  in  which  the  conquerors  delighted  and 
of  which  they  boasted.  Justice  and  mercy  seem  alike 
unknown ;  and  not  only  do  they  seem  unknown  to  men, 


32  Modern  Christianity 

but  even  the  gods  whom  they  worship  approve  and 
sanction  such  practices,  and  these  same  gods  require  of 
their  worshippers  a  service  involving  immorality  and 
drunkenness. 

Cross  the  Mediterranean  to  Greece,  with  its  fairy 
grace  of  art  and  literature,  which  have  never  been 
surpassed.  Out  of  the  gems  of  poetry  preaching  the 
doctrine  of  pleasure,  sighs  forth  ever  and  anon  a  very 
hopelessness  of  misery.  They  try  to  be  glad  and  groan 
in  despair;  and  even  as  you  watch  you  see  tyranny, 
anarchy,  confusion,  and  strife  gain  the  upper  hand; 
dishonesty,  immorality,  love  of  ease,  and  sensual  in- 
dulgence bring  about  the  downfall  of  Greece,  and  the 
religion  of  Greece  perishes. 

Rome,  with  its  strength,  masters  the  world.  It 
drains  provinces  in  legalised  robbery  to  enrich  the 
Roman  citizens.  Its  highest  philosophy  teaches  sel- 
fishness. The  order  of  the  Roman  state  is  an  advance 
upon  the  systems  that  have  gone  before,  but  it  has  not 
brought  happiness,  nor  has  it  achieved  stability.  If  the 
world  was  better  under  the  Romans  than  under  their 
predecessors,  at  least  from  our  standpoint  (in  spite  of 
all  the  evil  about  us),  its  condition  was  a  miserable  one. 
The  weak  were  crowded  to  the  wall  like  dogs,  and  even 
the  rich  and  prosperous  knew  that  if  misfortune  befell 
them  their  fellows  would  turn  against  them  as  wolves 
rend  a  wounded  member  of  their  pack.  When  I  read 
the  records  of  the  ancient  world,  I  wonder  to  myself  at 
times  how  men  and,  much  more,  how  women  could  have 
borne  to  live  in  days  such  as  those. 

Our  very  judgment  of  life  to-day  is  different  from 
theirs,  and  it  is  largely  this  difference  of  standpoint 


The  Echo  of  the  Cross  33 

which  makes  the  conditions  of  the  present  time  seem 
to  us  so  abhorrent.  Men  in  this  country  and  in  Europe, 
however  lax  they  may  be  in  the  practice  of  their  Christ- 
ianity, are,  nevertheless,  in  their  judgment  of  right  and 
wrong,  in  their  estimate  of  the  conditions  of  life,  affected, 
often  unwittingly  to  themselves,  by  the  standard  which 
Christ  brought  into  the  world.  For  a  new  spirit  did  en- 
ter into  the  world  with  Christ.  A  light  began  to  lighten 
the  darkness  of  the  nations.  Not  for  one  moment  would 
I  have  you  understand  me  to  mean  that  God  had  left 
the  early  world  without  light  and  hope.  Moses,  Elijah, 
Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  many  another  prophet  of  Israel 
had  seen  angel  visions  and  heard  the  song  of  glory  to 
God  and  peace,  good-will  among  men.  Zoroaster  and 
Gautama,  Plato,  Lucretius,  and  many  another  wise  man 
of  the  Gentiles  had  seen  the  brightness  of  a  star  point- 
ing toward  the  manger  at  Bethlehem  and  done  homage 
to  the  divine  incarnate  in  man.  But  shepherds  of  Israel 
and  wise  men  of  the  Gentiles  had  but  seen  the  day-star 
which  precedes  the  rising  of  the  sun.  Man,  in  the  early 
days  of  the  world's  history,  you  may  liken  to  a  new-born 
animal,  blind-eyed  and  groping  in  darkness.  Christ 
opened  men's  eyes,  and  made  them  see  the  evil  of  the 
things  they  were  doing.  It  is  the  increasing  power  of 
vision  in  man,  as  he  becomes  more  and  more  accustomed 
to  the  light  which  came  by  Christ,  which  makes  him  re- 
coil in  horror  from  those  things  which  once  gave  him  no 
shock.  The  coming  of  Christ  has  been  like  the  slow 
rising  of  the  sun — first  a  faint  light  which  but  makes 
the  darkness  visible;  then  you  begin  to  see  one  object 
and  another  looming  up,  strange  and  mysterious,  out  of 
the  nothingness  which  was  about  you  before.  Then  the 


34  Modern  Christianity 

heavens  begin  to  brighten  with  the  glory  of  the  coming 
sun. 

If  you  read  the  story  of  the  Christian  ages  you  will 
see  how  slowly  and  how  gradually  the  light  has  lightened 
that  darkness,  and  how  in  very  fact  it  is  the  light  of 
Christ  which  has  effected  these  changes.  It  is  the 
Christian  element  which  has  been  the  essential  feature 
in  the  development  of  the  higher  and  better  part  of  that 
civilisation  which  makes  Europe  and  America  what 
they  are  for  good.  Christianity  is  not  a  scheme  of  re- 
ligion, but  a  principle  of  life,  which,  implanted  in  a  man 
or  in  mankind,  grows  and  grows  and  develops  in  him. 
The  progress  of  the  Christian  ages  has  been  slow,  often- 
times uncertain,  like  the  growth  and  development  of  a 
child ;  and  as  a  child,  as  it  grows,  looks  back  and  won- 
ders at  its  former  ignorance  and  naughtiness,  so  the 
Christian  world  has  done  at  each  successive  age.  As  you 
look  back  over  the  history  of  Christianity,  it  is  like  the 
history  of  your  own  life,  full  of  what  seem  to  you  now 
absurd  mistakes  and  errors  and  delusions.  So,  also,  de- 
lusions and  errors  and  wickednesses  have  paraded  as 
Christianity.  Much  that  we  of  to-day  abhor  in  Russian 
conditions  was  regarded  by  our  own  forefathers  as  not 
only  consistent  with  but  required  by  the  principles  of 
Christianity.  Often  men  in  advance  of  their  age,  men 
who  perceive  more  clearly  than  those  about  them  the 
real  teaching  of  Christ,  have  become  utterly  disheart- 
ened by  the  lack  of  fulfilment  of  Christian  promise  in  the 
religious  practice  of  Christ's  followers,  and  have  con- 
sequently thought  Christianity  moribund  and  Christian 
civilisation  doomed  to  follow  the  systems  that  have  gone 
before.  But,  breaking  free  from  some  foreign,  un-Christ- 


The  Echo  of  the  Cross  3  5 

ian  element,  which  had  dragged  it  to  the  ground,  Christ- 
ianity has  each  time  risen  again,  full  of  new  life,  until 
at  the  present  day,  in  spite  of  all  the  evil  that  we  see 
around  us,  Christianity  is  fresher  and  stronger  than  ever 
before.  It  has  spread,  sometimes  more  slowly,  some- 
times more  rapidly,  but  always  gaining  ground. 

Perhaps  you  can  see  best  from  the  comparison  of  our 
own  age  with  those  which  immediately  precede  it,  both 
the  vitality  of  Christianity,  as  the  bettering  power  in  the 
world,  and  also  the  nature  of  the  betterment  it  is  work- 
ing; for  our  age  has  seen  in  the  whole  Christian  world, 
but  particularly  in  this  country  and  England,  a  remark- 
able advance  in  the  comprehension  and  practice  of 
Christianity.  The  time  was  when  men  would  trifle  with 
life  and  murder  one  another  for  what  they  called  their 
honour,  and  society  commended  them.  Our  age  has 
branded  such  acts  as  murder.  Not  long  since  men  were 
put  to  death  for  theft.  Our  better  understanding  of  the 
love  of  Christ  has  brought  about  a  far  higher  valuation 
of  life.  Men  formerly  set  civil  or  criminal  penalties  on 
religious  beliefs  which  disagreed  with  their  own.  Our 
age  has  done  very  much  toward  freeing  the  consciences 
and  intellects  of  men,  and  so  promoting  the  knowledge 
and  the  love  of  God.  In  the  early  years  of  the  last  cen- 
tury lotteries  were  a  recognised  agency  in  raising  money 
for  all  public  and  benevolent  objects,  and  gambling  was 
thus  sanctioned  by  both  State  and  Church.  Gambling 
in  any  form  is  now  absolutely  condemned  by  both  State 
and  Church.  Drunkenness  and  loose  living  are  common 
enough  to-day,  but  society  has  adopted  a  tone  of  con- 
demnation toward  them  which  was  unknown  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  last  century.  A  century  ago  public 


36  Modern  Christianity 

men  lived  without  protest  lives  which  to-day  would 
render  any  public  or  even  high  business  trust  impossible. 
Above  all,  we  have  thrown  off  the  fearful  curse  of  hu- 
man slavery  and  in  so  doing  made  an  enormous  stride 
toward  the  recognition  of  the  Christian  truth  of  the  lib- 
erty, equality,  and  fraternity  of  man.  You  and  I  think 
that  the  present  conditions  in  Russia  are  a  horrible  trav- 
esty on  Christianity.  I  have  already  pointed  out  that 
they  are  the  conditions  which  a  few  generations  ago  pre- 
vailed all  over  Europe.  Russia  is  backward,  but  even 
the  Russian  autocracy  and  the  Russian  Church  have 
shown  a  responsiveness  to  appeals  based  on  grounds  of 
Christian  love  which  would  have  been  impossible  and 
unthought  of  one  hundred  or  even  fifty  years  since. 

And  if  there  seems  to  you  to  be  an  appalling 
condition  of  demoralisation  and  dishonesty  in  our  own 
political  and  social  life  at  the  present  time,  with  condi- 
tions such  as  I  depicted  a  few  moments  since,  do  not 
nevertheless  be  hopeless  of  reform  or  think  that  the 
world  is  going  backward.  Meet  those  conditions  and 
face  them  honestly.  Ask  yourself  what  part  and  what 
responsibility  you  have  in  them.  Gird  yourself  at  the  be- 
ginning of  this  new  year  for  a  new  battle,  first  for  the 
conquest  of  yourself,  and  secondly  for  the  victory  of  the 
cause  of  Christ  over  dishonesty  and  falsehood  and  sham. 
As  the  strongest  men  in  life's  work  are  those  who  have 
been  forced  to  battle  against  the  hardest  conditions,  so 
the  best  and  the  strongest  Christian  civilisation  is  that 
which  is  achieved  as  the  result  of  a  struggle  against 
what  sometimes  seem  odds.  Do  you  realise  the  prevail- 
ing tone  of  materialism  and  dishonesty  about  you? 
Have  you  been  discouraged  by  it?  Do  not  be  discour- 


The  Echo  of  the  Cross  37 

aged  or  disheartened.  Thank  God  that  He  has  called 
you  to  a  noble  work.  For,  to  see  the  evil,  means  that 
you  are  one  whose  eyes  God  has  opened,  one  whom  God 
has  called  to  be  His  comrade  in  the  fight.  And  therefore, 
also,  any  one  who  sees  evil  and  does  not  forthwith  gird 
himself  to  the  struggle  to  overcome  that  evil  is  a  traitor 
to  the  cause  of  God  and  Christ.  Take  that  thought  with 
you  as  you  stand  scarce  within  the  threshold  of  this  new 
year,  and  the  year  will  become  to  you  a  year  of  progress 
such  as  you  never  knew  before. 

When  I  was  a  boy  I  used  to  swim  in  the  river  yonder. 
Generally  the  current  was  strong.  If  I  swam  hard  I 
could  make  headway,  albeit  slowly;  if  I  relaxed  my 
efforts  for  a  moment,  I  lost  ground,  which  took  me  a 
long  time  to  regain.  It  was  easy  to  go  with  the  tide.  I 
did  not  need  to  swim.  I  only  floated  along.  There  was 
no  effort  and  yet  I  moved  more  swiftly  than  when  i 
swam  against  it.  So  there  was  a  constant  temptation 
to  go  with  the  tide,  but  then,  oh !  the  exhausting  struggle 
that  must  be  made  to  get  back  to  the  landing  place. 
In  our  life  we  find  ourselves  set  in  a  current  of  materi- 
alism, selfishness,  indifference,  supineness,  neglect  of 
responsibilities,  unreadiness  to  accept  obligations  of  ser- 
vice. It  is  hard  to  swim  against  that  tide.  And  when 
you  have  swam  as  hard  as  you  can,  the  gain  you  make 
seems  to  you  scarcely  perceptible,  or  you  even  seem  to 
yourself  sometimes  to  be  going  backwards.  Why  not 
yield,  cease  struggling  and  toiling,  throw  myself  on  my 
back,  and  go  with  the  tide?  Then  a  man  is  like  the 
offal  and  dead  waste  that  float  will-less  back  and  forth 
on  the  surface  of  the  stream,  vile  and  worthless.  Be- 
cause we  live  and  because  we  would  live  we  must 


38  Modern  Christianity 

struggle  and  toil,  and  the  swifter  the  current  the 
stronger  must  be  our  efforts.  If  you  see  much  evil,  do 
not  for  that  cause  faint.  Rather  let  it  be  the  signal 
to  you  to  strive  as  you  never  strove  before. 

And  now  one  last  word.  Christianity  has  often 
seemed  to  be  so  tied  up  with  ceremonies  and  forms  and 
doctrines  that  it  is  no  longer  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ. 
But  there  is  one  central  thing  in  Christianity  which, 
in  spite  of  all  false  teachings,  of  indifferent  and  deaden- 
ing ceremonies  and  doctrines,  has  remained  a  testimony 
to  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus  himself,  and  that  is  the 
Sacrament  of  which  you  are  to  partake  this  morning. 
Whatever  the  Church  has  done,  it  has  always  kept  that 
before  men,  as  though  by  the  inner  guidance  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  holding  it  out  to  men  as  the  very  central  mystery 
of  the  faith.  Whatever  has  been  added,  whatever  has 
been  taken  away, still  that  Sacrament  has  held  up  before 
men  the  conception  of  service  and  sacrifice  as  the  eter- 
nal element  in  Christianity  and  as  the  revelation  of  God 
to  men.  However  you  may  interpret  the  words  of 
Christ,  whatever  may  be  your  conception  of  that  Sac- 
rament, transubstantiation,  or  consubstantiation,  or 
merely  commemoration,  so  long  as  men  are  brought  to 
this  as  the  final  exhibition  of  that  which  is  divine,  so 
long  as  the  Church  protests  by  this  Sacrament  that  the 
service  of  others  and  the  sacrifice  of  self  for  the  sake  of 
love  and  truth  are  better  than  anything  which  can  befall 
a  man,  are  in  fact  divinity  itself,  so  long  the  Church  has 
within  it  the  Spirit  of  God. 


THE  EMPTY  TOMB 

i  CORINTHIANS  xv.,  22:  As  in  Adam  all  die,  even  so  in 
Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive. 

WHEN  Jesus  was  laid  in  the  rock-hewn  tomb  of 
Joseph  of  Arimathaea  on  the  night  of  the  Cruci- 
fixion, there  was  no  time  to  perform  the  last  rites  of  af- 
fection for  the  body  of  the  dead.  The  following  day  was 
one  on  which  by  law  and  custom  one  might  not  visit  the 
tomb,  even  to  care  for  one's  nearest  and  dearest.  Im- 
agine the  heartaches  of  the  mother  of  Jesus  and  the  men 
and  women  who  so  tenderly  loved  Him  at  the  thought 
of  the  poor  body  laid  in  the  tomb  uncared  for,  and  their 
anxiety  at  least  to  perform  those  rites  that  should  tes- 
tify to  their  love!  Imagine,  too,  their  longing  to  see  and 
touch  Him  once  more! 

Very  early  on  Easter  morning,  before  it  was  light,  the 
women  were  on  their  way  to  the  tomb.  Then  followed  a 
startling  discovery — the  stone  rolled  away,  the  tomb 
emptied !  Had  those  who  so  cruelly  put  Him  to  death 
added  this  further  cruelty, — had  they  taken  away  the 
body,  either  to  submit  it  to  further  indignities,  or  to  pre- 
vent the  affectionate  care  of  those  who  so  dearly  loved 
Him?  Then  those  women  who  had  come  to  perform 
the  tender  rites  hurried  back  to  tell  the  men  folk,  the 
disciples,  what  had  happened.  And  Peter  and  John 
came  in  all  haste,  running  to  see  for  themselves;  but 

39 


40  Modern  Christianity 

they  also  found  the  tomb  empty.  The  body  of  their 
Lord  was  no  longer  there. 

We,  too,  find  empty  tombs  where  the  bodies  of  our 
dear  ones  have  lain.  We,  too,  long  to  care  for  them, 
to  minister  tenderly  to  their  needs,  to  touch  them,  to 
see  them.  Our  love  for  them  and  our  thought  of  them 
are  wrapt  up  with  their  bodily  form  and  appearance. 
When  that  is  taken  from  us,  then  they  seem  to  have 
gone  indeed.  So  long  as  the  body  remains,  with  its 
familiar  appearance,  tangible,  although  it  is  cold  and 
there  is  no  response  to  our  words  or  our  caress,  yet 
we  can  imagine  our  dear  one  to  be  present  with  us;  but 
when  the  body  is  gone,  then  comes  the  dismay  of  loss, 
the  full  sense  of  our  desolation.  We  all  have  known 
these  empty  tombs,  for  the  bodies  of  our  dead  must 
vanish.  And  therefore  the  story  of  Mary  and  the 
women,  of  Peter  and  John,  startled  and  dismayed  by  the 
empty  tomb,  by  the  disappearance  of  Him  whom  they 
loved,  touches  our  hearts  with  some  sense  of  personal 
experience  and  reality. 

And  what  comes  out  of  these  tombs  of  our  dead  ? 
Death  is  a  strange  revealer.  Here  is  a  man  supposed  to 
be  a  decent  and  orderly  member  of  society,  respected 
by  those  who  knew  him  and  dealt  with  him,  beloved 
in  his  family,  stricken  down  suddenly  by  the  hand  of 
death ;  and  death  reveals  a  double  life,  a  wife  betrayed,  il- 
licit associations  which  those  who  honoured  and  respect- 
ed him  had  not  for  a  moment  imagined.  Here  is  another, 
the  prominence  of  whose  position  calls  forth  obituaries 
in  the  papers,  a  man  who  inherited  great  wealth,  to 
use  it  in  foolish  and  sensual  extravagance,  his  one 
ambition  to  shine  in  a  luxurious  and  smart  society, 


The  Empty  Tomb  41 

married  to  a  divorcee  who  spurned  the  primal  laws  of 
matrimony.  From  his  empty  tomb  issue  but  the 
ghosts  of  self-indulgence  and  luxury.  Here  is  another 
with  a  record  in  the  public  life  of  the  community,  and 
when  he  has  passed  away,  the  best  word  that  honest 
men  can  say  of  him  is  that,  though  he  prostituted  his 
position  of  trust  to  enrich  himself  at  the  expense  of  the 
community,  he  was  no  worse  than  many  others.  Out 
of  his  tomb  come  only  vulture  and  harpy  forms,  like 
those  old  vampire  dreams  of  the  dead  which  prey  in 
horrid  shapes  upon  the  living.  This  is  all  such  men 
leave  behind,  horrid  shapes  to  disturb,  distress,  and 
prey  upon  the  vitals  of  their  families  and  of  their 
friends. 

We  often  liken  the  grave  to  a  chrysalis  in  which  the 
caterpillar  is  entombed,  to  come  out  a  beautiful  butter- 
fly. But  not  every  chrysalis  produces  a  butterfly. 
Sometimes  ichneumon  flies  have  stung  them  and  laid 
within  them  eggs  which  hatch  out  worms  that  devour 
the  poor  caterpillar  and  then  come  forth  in  his  stead  to 
life;  and  so  it  may  be  that  the  chrysalis  which  you  have 
watched  and  from  which  you  expected  a  beautiful 
moth  or  butterfly  to  appear  sends  forth  at  last  only  a 
swarm  of  ichneumon  flies.  The  graves  of  some  men  are 
like  this.  The  tomb  is  empty;  the  body  that  you  knew 
is  gone,  and  out  of  the  place  where  it  lay  comes  a  foul 
swarm  of  creatures  whose  existence  you  never  suspected 
and  which  yet  contain  all  that  is  left  of  him  whose  body 
lay  there.  Pray  God  our  empty  tombs  be  not  like  that ! 

But  here  is  something  quite  different.  Here,  as  we 
peer  sorrowing  into  the  empty  tomb,  sitting  where  once 
the  body  lay  we  see  forms  of  heavenly  grace.  Death 


42  Modern  Christianity 

reveals  to  those  who  mourn  his  loss  the  beauty  of  the 
character  and  the  loveliness  of  the  life  of  him  who  has 
gone.  This  one  comes,  with  a  tear  in  his  eye,  to  clasp 
your  hand  in  sympathy  and  say:  "I  loved  him  too," 
and  tells  you  why— words  he  spoke,  deeds  he  did  of 
which  you  never  heard  before.  Perhaps  he  was  not 
famous.  No  one  writes  his  obituary  in  the  paper,  but 
the  record  of  his  good  deeds  is  written  in  the  tender 
memories  of  those  who  knew  him,  and,  though  your 
tomb  is  empty,  out  of  it  comes  a  beautiful  vision. 
The  small  faults  and  failings  of  your  dead  pass  away, 
and  you  see  the  true  beauty  of  the  soul  in  the  heavenly 
radiance  that  fills  the  place  where  he  had  lain. 

But  one  asks:  Is  this  the  only  immortality  of  our 
dead  ?  My  loved  one  that  has  gone,  can  I  never  touch 
him?  Can  I  never  sit  and  talk  with  him  again?  Does 
he  exist  only  in  the  spirit  of  his  deeds — these  beautiful 
shades  and  memories,  of  which  you  tell  me,  that  come 
out  of  the  empty  grave?  Read  further  the  story  of 
Easter-day,  how  Mary  Magdalene  yearned  to  see  and 
touch  the  Lord  Himself,  as  we  yearn  to  see  and  touch 
the  dear  ones  that  have  gone.  For  her  even  the  words 
of  the  angels  had  no  comfort.  1 1  was  not  enough  to  see 
these  messengers  from  heaven,  sitting  where  He  had 
lain,  offering  her  their  consolation,  revealing  to  her  the 
glory  of  the  life  of  Him  who  had  departed  and  His 
nearness  to  God  himself.  She  wanted  Him  she  had  so 
dearly  loved.  Where  had  they  laid  Him?  You  remem- 
ber how,  with  eyes  blinded  with  her  tears,  she  sought 
Him,  and  as  she  sought,  there  stood  beside  her  one 
whom  she  unseeing  imagined  to  be  the  gardener.  And 
when  the  familiar  voice  asked  the  cause  of  her  grief,  in 


The  Empty  Tomb  43 

the  absorption  of  the  one  thought,  "where  have  they 
laid  Him?"  deaf  to  all  things  else,  she  did  not  know 
His  voice  and  addressed  to  Him  her  dazed  and  frantic 
supplication  to  tell  her  where  they  had  laid  her  Lord. 
Then  with  compelling  tenderness  He  called  her  name, 
"Mary/*  and  she  knew  Him  and  would  have  clasped 
His  feet  to  worship  Him. 

This  and  all  the  tales  of  the  appearance  of  our  Lord 
contain  something  mysterious,  perplexing  to  us  of  to- 
day as  to  the  men  and  women  of  that  day.  He  appeared 
to  Mary,  yet  she  could  not  touch  Him.  He  walked  with 
the  disciples  that  went  to  Emmaus  and  talked  with 
them  and  they  did  not  know  Him  until,  as  they  sat  at 
their  evening  meal,  He  blessed  the  bread.  He  came 
to  the  Apostles  in  the  upper  room.  With  bated  breath 
they  told  how  the  door  was  closed  and  yet  He  stood 
among  them;  and  when  their  hearers  said  that  it  was 
but  a  spirit,  a  vision,  they  told  how  He  had  eaten  with 
them,  and  how  Thomas  had  touched  His  side  and  His 
hands.  There  were  other  strange  tales,  too;  how  He 
appeared  to  groups  of  them  in  Galilee,  on  the  Mount 
of  Olives,  to  above  five  hundred  at  one  time;  and  even 
Paul  testified  that  he  also  had  seen  Him. 

What  does  it  all  mean?  It  means,  I  think,  that  we 
touch  here  on  that  region  which  is  beyond  certainly  our 
present  knowledge,  probably  any  knowledge  which  we 
are  capable  of  attaining  in  our  mundane  existence. 
Our  perceptions  and  our  understanding  are  limited  by 
our  bodies  of  flesh,  by  our  material  surroundings,  by 
conditions  of  time  and  space.  We  see  and  we  know 
only  under  these  material  limitations.  And  even  this 
matter  that  limits  us  is  at  its  extremities  beyond  our 


44  Modern  Christianity 

ken.  We  cannot  tell  how  nor  whence  matter  came,  nor 
when  nor  how  nor  into  what  matter  shall  pass.  We 
perceive  a  something  or  some  things  within  matter  or 
affecting  matter  which  yet  are  not  matter, — force,  life, 
and  spirit,  or  whatever  name  or  names  you  use;  but 
we  cannot  explain  their  relation  to  matter,  nor  separate 
them  from  matter  and  see  them  for  themselves.  We 
speculate  and  imagine,  but  even  our  imagination  is 
blocked  by  the  impossibility  of  imagining  that  which 
does  not  have  material  existence  and  bodily  form.  We 
do  not  understand  our  own  experiences,  much  less  can 
we  communicate  them  clearly  and  intelligibly  to  others. 

The  story  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  is 
the  story  of  the  victory  over  material  death.  Some- 
how, in  some  way,  in  some  body  which  you  may  call 
with  St.  Paul,  if  you  will,  a  spiritual  body,  Jesus  re-ap- 
peared to  His  followers,  leaving  on  their  minds  an  im- 
pression of  strangeness  and  of  glory,  of  a  being  beyond 
their  understanding  and  their  comprehension.  And 
in  this  victory  over  death  He  prophesied  to  us  our  vic- 
t6ry  over  death  in  and  with  Him.  And  as  we  read  how 
He  communed  then  with  those  He  loved  and  realise 
the  communion  which  He  has  had  with  His  followers 
in  all  the  ages  since,  we  dimly  perceive  the  possibility 
not  only  of  a  future  life  but  also  of  communion  and 
reunion  with  those  whom  we  have  loved. 

So  wonderful  was  this  resurrection  of  Jesus  unto  life 
that  to  St.  Paul  it  seemed  to  mean  a  new  life,  a  new 
creation.  Turning  to  his  Old  Testament  he  found  the 
story  of  man's  beginning  on  earth:  Adam,  that  is,  man- 
kind, placed  in  God's  garden ;  sinning,  falling,  struggling 
with  the  nature  about  him,  earning  his  bread  by  the 


The  Empty  Tomb  45 

sweat  of  his  brow,  learning  the  lesson  of  life  by  sad  and 
hard  experience;  striving  and  toiling,  sinning  and  dying, 
whole  nations,  whole  civilisations  sinning  unto  death, 
passing  away  and  leaving  nothing  behind.  Here  was 
the  new  man  who  had  changed  all  this,  bringing  peace 
and  love  where  there  had  been  war  and  hatred,  life  in 
place  of  death,  man  recreated  in  the  image  of  God. 

There  has  always  been  a  tendency,  when  men  are 
sick  of  the  temptation  and  the  sin  that  beset  them,  to 
regard  the  material  things  of  this  world,  including  our 
own  bodies,  as  evil.  Many  men  and  many  sects  have 
sought  salvation  in  the  destruction  or  negation  of  the 
humanity  that  is  in  them.  And  to  not  a  few  professing 
Christians,  to-day  as  through  all  the  ages  since  Christ 
came,  this  flesh,  with  its  passions  and  its  lusts,  its  appe- 
tites and  its  desires,  has  seemed  essentially  evil.  It  is 
the  old  Adam.  Life  can  be  found  only  in  complete 
separation  from  these  things. 

You  and  I  see  death  all  about  us  in  men  and  women 
who  live  only  in  the  body.  We  have  seen  human  beings 
sodden  and  degraded,  living  like  the  animals.  We  have 
seen  men  and  women  toiling  in  the  tread-mill  of  life, 
with  no  higher  thought,  apparently,  than  to  do  just 
what  must  be  done  in  order  to  obtain  the  food  to  sus- 
tain life,  to  satisfy  their  passions  and  desires,  to  care 
for  their  offspring,  much  as  an  animal  cares  for  its  off- 
spring. Soulless,  we  have  called  such  persons,  because, 
although  evidently  higher  in  intellect  and  capacity 
than  the  beasts,  we  have  yet  found  no  other  element 
in  them  than  this  animal  one.  Wicked  we  could  not  say 
they  are,  but  simply  they  appear  soulless.  And  we 
have  known  others,  soulless  from  another  cause,  steeped 


46  Modern  Christianity 

in  sensuality,  living  for  the  satisfaction  of  their  own 
greed,  heartlessly  trampling  down  those  weaker  than 
themselves,  men  and  women  in  whom  there  seems  no 
response  to  spiritual  appeal.  Death,  the  apostle  calls 
this.  They  are  dead  in  Adam. 

And  we  have  seen  death  in  another  form,  sickness 
caused  or  aggravated  by  pure  selfishness  and  egotism, 
men  and  women  whose  thoughts  are  turned  in  upon 
themselves,  who  brood  upon  themselves,  their  needs, 
their  ailments,  their  wants,  their  desires,  who  see  noth- 
ing and  know  nothing  except  themselves.  Death  all 
this  is  also,  death  in  Adam,  as  St.  Paul  calls  it. 

Life  comes  with  Christ.  When  man  conceives  of  his 
life  as  the  life  of  God,  when  he  freely  and  daringly 
squanders  his  life  for  the  world,  pouring  out  the  treas- 
ures of  his  being,  the  life-blood  of  his  heart  for  the  world, 
then  he  is  made  alive  through  Christ.  Sin  and  sorrow, 
sickness  and  suffering,  which  are  death,  give  place  to 
life  in  a  regenerate  humanity. 

And  what  has  Christ  brought  out  of  the  grave  to  you 
and  to  me?  I  cannot  prove,  by  any  test  of  physical 
science,  the  continuance  of  life,  a  future  existence. 
When  I  seek  to  prove  it  in  that  way  the  future  seems  to 
me  as  blank  as  it  did  to  those  men  and  women  of  old, 
who  were  filled  with  dismay  because  the  body  of  the 
Lord  was  gone.  I  cannot  tell  you  how  He  rose,  with 
what  body,  in  what  form,  what  became  of  the  body 
that  had  been ;  but  as  I  read  that  story  in  the  Gospels, 
and  as  I  read  the  story  of  the  experience  of  Christian 
believers  through  the  ages  that  have  succeeded,  I  know 
that  Christ  has  risen  from  the  dead,  and  I  believe  that 
in  His  victory  over  death  He  has  revealed  to  us  the 


The  Empty  Tomb  47 

reality  of  life  immortal.  And  so  I  trust  my  dear  ones  to 
the  grave  in  confident  hope  that  this  is  not  the  end; 
and  so  I  expect,  when  my  time  comes  and  my  work 
here  is  finished,  to  pass  into  a  new  life  in  which  the  old 
loves  shall  not  be  lost  but  glorified. 


THE  RESURRECTION  OF  GOD 

COLOSSIANS  iii. ,  i :  If  ye  then  be  risen  with  Christ,  seek  those 
things  which  are  above,  where  Christ  sitteth  on  the  right 
hand  of  God. 

IT  has  been  a  long,  hard  winter  and  everywhere  men 
and  women  are  glad  to  see  the  signs  of  spring. 
Even  in  our  city  life,  with  its  lack  of  touch  with  Dame 
Nature  and  Mother  Earth,  we  feel  the  weariness  and 
dreariness  of  dead  winter  and  rejoice  in  the  sunshine 
and  the  warm  air  that  betoken  the  resurrection  of 
nature.  True,  there  is  but  little  of  nature  here, — the 
earth  concealed  by  pavements;  our  travel  done  on  rails 
stretched  through  or  beneath  the  streets;  the  houses 
rising  like  walls  of  canons  on  either  side,  shutting 
out  the  sunshine;  the  air  charged  with  dust,  smoke, 
and  soot,  and  converted  out  of  its  original  element  into 
a  sort  of  manufactured  city  product;  trees  only  in  the 
parks,  which  we  busy  folk  have  scant  time  to  visit, 
although  we  talk  with  pride  of  their  existence.  Yes, 
even  we  exult  in  the  new  birth  of  nature  that  is  just 
beginning  to  take  place,  and,  shut  out  as  we  are  from 
contact  with  nature,  many  and  many  a  house  makes  a 
feeble  attempt  to  enjoy  the  gladness  of  the  coming 
year  in  the  budding  of  spring  flowers  that  are  placed 
in  windows  here  and  there.  But  if  we  city-dwellers 
are  glad  that  spring  has  come,  much  greater  is  the  glad- 

48 


The  Resurrection  of  God          49 

ness  of  those  who  live  in  touch  with  nature,  much 
deeper  the  significance  of  its  coming  for  those  who 
live  close  to  Mother  Earth  and  realise  the  depend- 
ence of  man's  outward  life  on  the  conditions  of  the 
seasons.  The  bosom  of  the  earth  is  bare  again;  the 
sap  begins  to  flow,  the  leaf  buds  of  the  trees  swell,  so 
full  of  meaning  to  the  dwellers  in  the  country,  so  full 
of  prophecy  of  the  new  life  of  brightness  and  verdure 
and  fertility  that  shall  take  the  place  of  the  dark  and 
gloomy  death  of  the  long  winter. 

Do  you  wonder  that  this  resurrection  of  nature  meant 
the  coming  of  God  to  men  of  olden  time?  That  they 
saw  in  it  a  resurrection  of  divine  life?  The  very  name 
of  our  festival,  Easter,  is  itself  evidence  of  the  great 
and  glorious  significance  to  the  old  heathen  Germans 
of  this  birth  of  nature's  life.  God,  who  had  forsaken 
them,  God  who  seemed  dead,  had  come  back,  had  come 
to  life,  would  pour  out  His  loving  kindness  upon  them 
once  more.  It  is  a  heathen  name  with  which  we  desig- 
nate our  glorious  resurrection  festival,  a  name  which 
connects  us  with  the  thoughts  and  hopes  and  aspira- 
tions of  our  heathen  forebears.  Would  you  have  it 
otherwise?  True,  you  do  not  worship  the  goddess 
Eastra  or  Eostra  at  this  festival.  Perhaps  you  even 
forget  that  it  is  her  name  that  we  have  given  to  the 
feast  day  of  the  risen  Lord.  1 1  was  a  part  of  the  method 
of  the  early  Church  to  connect  the  events  of  Christ's 
life  and  the  doctrines  of  His  religion  with  heathen 
rites  and  heathen  thought,  on  that  principle  which  St. 
Paul  propounded  in  the  famous  sermon  at  Athens, 
when  he  said  to  the  Athenians:  "Whom  therefore  ye 
ignorantly  worship,  Him  declare  I  unto  you." 


So  Modern  Christianity 

The  old  world  found  hope  and  some  promise  of  resur- 
rection from  the  dead  for  man  in  the  resurrection  of 
dead  nature  year  by  year.  In  Egypt  and  Persia,  in 
Syria,  among  our  Germanic  ancestors,  there  were 
varying  thoughts  of  the  resurrection,  all  of  them  drawn 
from  the  analogy  of  nature.  Men  realised  that  all  life 
came  from  God.  The  remote  ancestors  of  the  Jews  laid 
down  a  rule  that  none  should  consume  blood,  because 
blood  was  life,  and  as  life  was  peculiarly  sacred  to  God 
from  whom  it  came,  to  Him  it  should  return.  The 
same  thought  in  another  form  shows  itself  over  and 
over  again,  in  many  places  and  at  many  times.  Life 
came  from  God;  and  so  the  stirring  of  life  in  spring, 
after  the  death  of  winter,  was  a  movement  of  God  Him- 
self, a  return  of  Him  from  whom  comes  all  life.  The 
resurrection  of  nature  was  the  resurrection  of  God 
from  the  dead;  and  further,  by  analogy,  men  drew  a 
deduction  of  their  own  resurrection  from  the  resurrec- 
tion of  all  nature.  To  bind,  therefore,  that  old  German 
feast  of  Eastra,  of  the  resurrection  of  nature  in  spring, 
with  the  resurrection  of  Christ  from  the  dead,  was  to 
claim  that  Christianity  was  the  completion  and  ful- 
filment of  that  hope  which  the  heathen  ancestors  had 
drawn  from  the  processes  of  nature  about  them.  To 
you  and  to  me  to-day  these  processes  of  nature  are  no 
more  than  beautiful  symbols.  For  us  their  significance 
depends  upon  our  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
Christ  from  the  dead.  They  are  not  the  means  by 
which  we  argue  to  the  resurrection,  but,  believing  that 
Christ  is  risen,  we  find  in  the  resurrection  of  the  world 
of  nature  about  us  beautiful  symbols  to  set  forth  that 
divine  truth  which  has  changed  the  life  of  man  in  the 


The  Resurrection  of  God  51 

world.  So  on  Easter-day  we  decorate  our  churches 
with  flowers.  Lilies  especially  are  regarded  as  signifi- 
cant of  the  Resurrection,  because  of  the  unsightly 
tubers  from  which  they  spring,  which  have  lain  dead, 
like  the  dead  bodies  of  men,  put  aside  in  a  tomb,  as  it 
were,  with  no  hint  in  their  form  and  appearance  of  the 
new  life  and  the  glorious  beauty  that  shall  spring  from 
them. 

But  these  flowers  which  we  use  as  the  symbols  of  the 
resurrection  from  the  dead  have  another  suggestion 
for  our  Easter.  Beautiful  and  pure,  their  beauty  and 
their  purity  come  out  of  unsightliness  and  uncleanness. 
Decay  and  pollution  are  the  conditions  of  the  new 
growth  and  new  life  of  nature.  And  so  they  are  to  us  an 
emblem  of  the  glorious  life  which  shall  be  born  out  of 
the  unsightliness,  the  squalor,  the  very  uncleanness  of 
our  human  conditions,  an  emblem  of  the  need  of  death 
and  disease,  with  all  their  horrors,  as  conditions  of  the 
new  life  that  is  to  be.  Yes,  out  of  the  very  sin  of  man, 
through  the  grace  of  God  Almighty,  is  born  a  newer 
and  a  higher  life.  Strange  paradox  of  nature  that 
things  so  beautiful  and  pure  and  white  as  these  lilies 
should  come  out  of  death  and  corruption  and  unclean- 
ness  !  Is  it  any  more  strange  that  in  the  spiritual  world 
there  should  be  the  same  development? 

But  when  we  talk  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead,  of 
immortality,  of  the  life  eternal,  we  must  never  forget 
that  the  life  eternal  is  a  life  which  must  begin  here. 
The  seed  that  is  planted  in  the  earth  must  contain  a 
life  germ,  otherwise  it  cannot  grow.  Every  tree  that 
begins  now  to  prepare  to  put  forth  new  leaves  and  rich 
fruit  must  have  stored  up  the  germs  of  leaves  and  fruit 


52  Modern  Christianity 

before  hand.  The  cocoon  out  of  which  comes  the  beau- 
tiful butterfly  must  first  have  been  provided  with  its 
living  tenant.  Life  comes  only  out  of  life.  There  is  a 
regular  process  of  development  and  growth  in  the 
physical  world,  and  the  laws  of  the  moral  universe  in 
that  are  the  same  as  the  laws  of  the  physical  universe. 
The  resurrection  from  the  dead,  to  which  you  and  I 
look  forward  as  the  gateway  to  the  life  eternal,  is 
possible  only  as  a  development  of  conditions,  a  continu- 
ance of  a  life  begun,  prepared  for  here  and  now.  True, 
in  the  tiny,  unformed,  germinal  conditions  we  do  not 
always  recognise  the  glorious  future.  True,  that  life  in 
the  germ  often  seems  to  us  unsightly,  yes,  even  worth- 
less, and  a  failure. 

We  are  conscious  of  our  sins.  We  have  struggled 
and  struggled  against  them  and  we  are  not  their  master. 
We  have  dreamt  great  dreams  of  the  things  that  we 
might  do  for  Christ  and  for  our  fellow  men,  but  our 
lives  have  been  so  empty  of  results  that  it  all  seems  a 
failure.  Ah !  to  many  such  an  one  there  will  be  a  resur- 
rection into  life  eternal,  full  of  a  glory  that  tongue  of 
man  cannot  depict;  and  the  very  sins  that  seem  to  beset 
us,  those  conditions  within  and  without  against  which 
we  have  struggled,  as  it  seemed  to  us  with  so  little  re- 
sult, will  prove  to  be  the  source  and  origin  of  that  life 
which  shall  display  itself  hereafter. 

On  Good  Friday  the  followers  of  Jesus  Christ  heard, 
with  a  dismay  which  I  fancy  we  can  never  fully  imagine, 
that  awful  cry  from  the  Cross  of  the  suffering  Saviour, 
"My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me," — the 
agonised  cry  of  humanity,  seeking  and  not  finding, 
asking  the  explanation  of  the  struggles  and  the  failures 


The  Resurrection  of  God  53 

of  its  life,  of  the  hardships  and  the  agonies  which  it 
endures,  the  cry  of  many  and  many  a  soul,  which  in 
one  form  or  another  has  gone  up  to  God  and  still  ascends 
when  all  our  ideals  vanish,  our  love  is  shattered,  our 
life  is  ruined,  and  we  can  see  no  sign  of  the  love  of  God 
about  us,  no  explanation  of  the  reason  of  our  conditions 
which  seems  to  admit  of  the  controlling  presence  of  a 
loving  Father.  How  often  it  seems  that  wrong  has 
won  the  ascendant,  the  world  seems  to  be  going  back- 
ward, virtue  is  lost,  the  cause  of  right  is  defeated,  lust, 
selfishness,  greed,  dishonesty  are  rampant  and  victor- 
ious, rewards  are  won  by  the  wicked;  for  the  godless 
there  is  wealth,  there  is  pleasure,  there  is  renown, 
there  is  success;  and  the  successful  are  held  in  esteem 
among  men !  One  could  well  suppose  that  God  Him- 
self was  bestowing  upon  them  the  reward  of  their  deeds. 
And  here  are  others  who  have  laboured  to  control 
themselves,  who  have  sought  to  live  a  life  of  love, 
thoughtful  of  the  needs  of  others,  not  seeking  their 
own,  unselfish,  pure,  diligent  to  do  good — and  they 
are  uncared  for.  You  know  doubtless  some  such  who 
have  been  counted  failures,  who  have  received  not 
honour  but  dishonour,  not  joy  and  peace  and  gladness, 
but  suffering  and  sorrow  and  distress.  Do  you  wonder 
that  there  comes  at  times  to  thoughtful  men  and 
women,  to  men  and  women  whose  hearts  burn  with  a 
desire  to  see  God's  kingdom  established  on  earth,  a 
sense  of  desolation,  the  feeling  that  He  has  forsaken 
His  own,  and  the  question  whether  in  truth  there  be  a 
God. 

On  Good  Friday  a  little  band  of  men  who  had  fol- 
lowed Jesus  of  Nazareth  slunk  back  from  the  tragedy 


54  Modern  Christianity 

of  the  Cross  to  the  poor  upper  chamber  in  Jerusalem, 
where  they  dwelt  together,  broken-hearted,  with  that 
horrible  cry  of  their  Master  on  the  Cross  ringing  in 
their  ears — "My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  for- 
saken me?"  So  it  was  all  a  failure.  They  had  given  up 
everything  and  followed  Him.  He  was  gone.  Their 
hope  of  the  restoration  of  Israel  had  vanished.  What 
was  there  to  which  to  look  forward  ?  A  few  days  later 
you  find  these  men  proudly  standing  before  multitudes, 
absolutely  convinced  not  only  that  God  had  not  for- 
saken them,  but  that  their  Lord  and  Master,  Jesus 
Christ,  had  risen  from  the  dead,  triumphant  over  that 
which  man  had  always  esteemed  his  greatest  enemy — 
death;  triumphant  over  sin  and  Satan.  They  could 
not  tell  you  how  He  came  to  them,  they  could  not 
explain  the  philosophy  of  His  resurrection,  but  the 
plain  fact  they  knew,  and  knew  it  with  such  over- 
whelming conviction  that  it  changed  not  only  their 
lives  but  the  life  of  the  world  from  that  time  on. 

God  does  not  forsake  His  own.  It  may  look  to  you 
and  me  as  though  we  were  forsaken.  It  may  look  to 
us  who  strive  and  struggle  for  the  coming  of  the  king- 
dom of  God,  and  pray  that  God's  reign  on  earth  may 
begin,  as  though  the  world  were  going  backward,  as 
though  sin  and  greed  and  lust  were  rampant  and  vic- 
torious; but  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  we 
have  assurance  of  the  victory  of  life  over  death,  of 
light  over  darkness.  That  glorious  resurrection  means 
to  you  and  me  individual  immortality;  that  the  grave 
is  not  the  end;  that  our  feeble  efforts  shall  find  their 
reward  and  fruition  in  a  life  infinitely  glorious. 

But  while  Easter,  with  its  tale  of  the  Resurrection, 


The  Resurrection  of  God  55 

is  full  for  us  of  the  thought  of  a  life  after  death  which 
transforms  and  changes  our  present  life,  I  would  have 
you  remember,  further,  the  world  meaning  of  this 
resurrection — that  it  is  a  perpetual  prophecy  of  the  vic- 
tory of  God  and  right,  to  the  end  that  you  and  I  may 
take  heart  and  courage  to  go  on  and  fight  the  fight,  sure 
that  though  we  may  not  here  win  that  which  we  call 
victory,  yet  here  also  victory  shall  be  won  and  God's 
kingdom  shall  be  established  upon  earth;  and  all  who 
have  striven  for  the  coming  of  that  kingdom  shall  be 
sharers,  if  not  in  the  triumph  here  on  earth,  yet  in  a 
triumph  in  heaven  in  which  Christ  shall  give  them  the 
reward. 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  BIRTH  AND  DEATH 

ACTS  v.,  30:  The  God  of  our  fathers  raised  up  Jesus,  whom 
ye  slew,  hanging  him  on  a  tree. 

IF  you  follow  religious  discussions  at  all  you  must 
know  that  men  are  asking  now,  as  they  always  have 
been  asking,  how  could  God  become  man  ?  how  could 
God  be  incarnate  in  Jesus  Christ?  If  God  is  spirit, 
how  could  He  become  flesh?  how  could  God  dwell  in  a 
man's  body?  how  could  the  infinite  become  finite? 
And  if  He  dwelt  in  that  body,  what  became  of  that 
body  when  he  died?  Could  He  take  that  body  away 
with  Him?  Could  matter  turn  into  spirit?  Could  the 
finite  become  infinite? 

Any  one  who  thinks  much  must  have  asked  himself 
at  some  time  or  other  such  questions.  Many  of  you 
have  doubtless  asked  yourselves  these  or  similar  ques- 
tions, not  once  or  twice  but  many  times.  Some  of  you 
have  not  found  answers  satisfactory  to  yourselves. 
Some  of  you  are  not  communicants  of  the  Church  be- 
cause you  have  not  found  satisfactory  answers.  If  a 
satisfactory  answer  means  one  which  explains  precisely 
how  this  happened  or  could  happen,  then  no  answer 
can  as  yet  be  given,  because  we  do  not  yet  know  enough 
about  matter  and  spirit,  finite  and  infinite,  to  explain 
their  relations  to  one  another. 

This  is  not,  however,  an  ignorance  which  affects  only 
56 


The  Mystery  of  Birth  and  Death     57 

the  birth  and  death  of  Jesus,  it  affects  the  whole  ques- 
tion of  birth  and  death.  There  is  a  mystery  behind  the 
whole  matter  which  we  have  not  solved.  We  know  the 
facts  of  birth  and  death,  and  that  is  all.  If  we  could 
solve  the  mystery  of  our  own  birth  and  death,  then  we 
should  understand,  I  doubt  not,  how  Jesus  could  be 
born  God,  yet  man,  spirit  dwelling  in  flesh,  infinite  in 
finite;  and  how  that  infinite  could  be  again  restored  to 
its  infinity,  and  of  what  nature  was  the  body  of  our  risen 
Lord.  For  the  problems  which  are  involved  in  the  birth 
and  resurrection  of  Jesus  are  in  their  essence  the  prob- 
lems which  are  involved  in  the  coming  into  the  world 
and  going  out  of  the  world  of  every  child  of  man  and 
God.  Or,  more  fundamental  still,  the  problems  which 
are  involved  in  the  birth  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  are 
in  their  essence  the  problems  of  the  origin  and  the 
future  of  this  world  itself. 

We  have  learned  much,  very  much  about  this  world 
and  its  formation,  about  the  properties  and  possi- 
bilities of  matter,  and  somewhat  less,  but  still  much, 
about  life,  and  the  laws  of  life.  And  particularly  in  the 
last  generation  has  our  advance  in  the  knowledge  of  the 
laws  and  phenomena  of  life  and  force  and  matter  in- 
creased with  the  most  startling  rapidity.  And  yet  our 
ignorance  is  far  vaster  and  more  startling  than  our 
knowledge.  Those  who  have  advanced  the  furthest 
see  most  clearly  how  infinitely  greater  is  the  unknown 
before  us  than  that  which  we  have  even  in  part 
explored. 

What  is  life? 

What  is  force? 

What  is  matter? 


58  Modern  Christianity 

Who  can  create  matter?  Matter  exists,  and  we  have 
found  no  way  to  destroy  it  or  create  it,  neither  can  we 
tell  out  of  what  it  came,  nor  into  what  it  goes.  Even 
our  own  bodies  are  ours  to  use  only  for  a  time.  We  can 
not  take  them  away.  They  began  in  the  bodies  of  our 
parents,  as  parts  of  those  bodies,  growing  out  of  them, 
feeding  on  them.  Our  parents  came  in  the  same  way 
from  their  parents,  and  so  the  chain  goes  back  endlessly, 
for  all  that  our  philosophy  can  say,  matter  out  of  mat- 
ter from  eternity.  We  came  into  the  world  little  frag- 
ments of  matter,  flesh  and  blood  and  bones,  and  we  took 
matter  into  ourselves  and  grew  to  be  larger  fragments 
of  matter.  From  the  air  and  water  we  drank  in  certain 
ingredients;  we  consumed  the  bodies  and  produce  of 
other  animals,  we  took  into  ourselves  seeds,  and  fruit, 
and  stalks,  and  roots,  and  leaves,  and  barks  of  various 
vegetables  and  increased  the  amount  of  matter  in  our 
bodies.  All  this  matter  made  matter.  By  and  by  we 
shall  be  put  in  the  ground,  and  this  matter  will  go  into 
other  matter.  It  will  take  more  or  less  time  to  resolve 
it  into  other  matter,  according  to  the  conditions,  but 
sooner  or  later  every  particle  of  our  present  bodies  will 
enter  into  other  combinations  and  form  part  of  other 
objects  animate  or  inanimate.  Not  the  slightest  particle 
will  vanish  nor  be  lost.  That  much  we  know.  The  law 
of  the  Conservation  of  Matter  is  now  well  established. 
There  is  a  certain  amount  of  matter  constituting  our 
universe.  There  has  always  been  the  same  amount  of 
matter.  It  appears  in  all  sorts  of  combinations,  but 
it  is  always  the  same  matter.  Now  it  is  part  of  a  rock, 
anon  it  appears  as  a  piece  of  an  herb,  now  it  is  part  of 
a  man,  now  it  is  a  gas,  and  now  it  is  rock  again.  It  is 


The  Mystery  of  Birth  and  Death     59 

like  a  kaleidoscope,  where  a  few  pieces  of  glass  with  a 
couple  of  reflecting  surfaces  produce  countless  different 
combinations.  So  far  as  science  can  yet  see,  matter  has 
always  been  the  same;  it  was  there  to  begin  with;  none 
of  it  has  ever  been  lost;  no  more  has  ever  been  created. 
That  is  as  far  as  we  can  get.  A  certain  amount  of  matter 
in  existence,  unmakable,  indestructible.  Did  it  make 
itself?  Is  it  in  its  essence  eternal?  I  think  you  will 
almost  involuntarily  say  "No."  If  not,  how  did  it 
come  to  be,  and  what  shall  it  become?  Here  is  the  first 
problem  of  birth  and  death. 

But  science  has  discovered  another  law,  the  law  of 
the  Conservation  of  Force.  Out  of  my  window  I  can  see 
men  and  machines  drilling  holes  in  the  rock  for  purposes 
of  blasting.  Then,  when  the  holes  are  prepared,  dyna- 
mite is  put  in,  electricity  is  applied  to  the  dynamite  by 
a  wire  from  a  portable  battery,  there  is  a  sudden  out- 
burst of  energy,  and  the  rock  is  broken  in  pieces.  Now 
that  dynamite  does  not  originate  the  energy.  It  is 
stored  up  energy  gathered  from  various  sources.  It  has 
been  in  existence  before.  The  electricity  is  old  force 
used  over  again.  It  may  have  been  another  form  of 
force  before,  but  it  was  in  existence  as  force  in  some 
form  or  another.  The  same  is  true  of  the  force  applied 
to  the  rock  through  the  steam  drills.  Not  a  particle  of 
this  force  is  new,  created  for  this  occasion.  It  is  old 
force,  used  we  do  not  know  how  many  times  over,  then 
stored  up  and  passed  on  to  be  used  again.  And  the  same 
is  true  of  the  force  applied  by  men.  When  one  of  those 
strong  men  raises  his  sledge-hammer  and  strikes  the 
rock  a  mighty  blow,  he  applies  force,  he  passes  on  force 
already  in  existence,  he  does  not  create  the  force  any 


60  Modern  Christianity 

more  than  he  creates  the  sledge-hammer.  Nor  does  the 
force  which  he  applies  pass  out  of  existence  when  it  has 
been  applied.  1 1  does  not  even  suffer  the  slightest  dimi- 
nution, but  propagates  new  force,  although  never  more 
force.  If  you  lift  your  finger  through  the  air  you  have 
used  force  and  produced  force,  and  you  have  produced 
just  as  much  as  you  have  used,  neither  more  nor  less. 
There  was  the  same  amount  of  force  in  existence  a 
thousand  years  ago  as  to-day.  You  cannot  create  it, 
you  cannot  destroy  it.  For  all  that  natural  science  can 
see,  the  same  amount  of  force  or  energy  was  in  the  be- 
ginning, is  now,  and  shall  be  for  all  eternity.  What  is 
more,  force  has  always  been  combined  with  matter, 
and,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  always  must  be,  the  two  being 
interdependent  in  some  manner.  Now,  then,  was  this 
unmakable  and  indestructible  force  always  there,  will  it 
always  continue  to  be  there?  Is  it  uncreated,  eternal, 
final?  I  think  again  that  every  one  must  involuntarily 
say  "No."  But  how  and  whence  did  it  come  and  into 
what  shall  it  resolve  itself?  Here  is  the  second  problem 
of  birth  and  death. 

But  if  the  problems  of  the  origin  and  hereafter  of  force 
and  matter  are  so  difficult,  still  far  greater  are  the  diffi- 
culties which  science  has  encountered  in  the  problem 
of  the  origin  and  the  hereafter  of  life.  Matter  we  can 
see,  we  can  handle,  we  can  weigh,  although  we  can 
neither  create  nor  destroy  it;  force  is  intangible,  yet 
it  is  possible  to  measure  and  to  define  it,  to  see  wherein 
it  consists,  to  control  and  bind  it;  but  life  we  cannot 
even  define.  Not  only  is  it  beyond  our  power  to  create 
it,  but  we  do  not  know  wherein  it  consists.  It  is  there, 
and  yet  we  cannot  find  it.  We  cannot  place  our  hand 


The  Mystery  of  Birth  and  Death     61 

upon  it,  nor  measure  it,  nor  weigh  it,  nor  even  tell  what 
it  is. 

A  few  years  since  the  scientific  world  was  agitated 
by  a  discussion  of  the  origin  of  life.  Some  French 
scientists  supposed  they  had  discovered  that  life  was 
self-creative,  or,  under  certain  conditions,  originated 
out  of  dead  matter.  Milk  and  other  fluids  were  steril- 
ised and  hermetically  sealed  in  glass  jars.  After  a  time 
bacteria  germs  developed  out  of  nothing,  as  was  at  first 
supposed ;  but  Pasteur  soon  proved  that  this  develop- 
ment of  bacteria  germs  was  due  to  carelessness  of  the 
experimenters,  by  which  they  had  permitted  germs 
from  without  to  be  introduced  into  the  sterilised  fluids. 
He  conducted  the  same  experiments  with  greater  care 
and  proved  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  world  that  matter 
once  devitalised  no  life  can  come  out  of  it. 

Life  comes  only  out  of  life,  as  force  comes  only  out 
of  force  and  matter  out  of  matter;  and  force  and 
matter  cannot  produce  life.  Such  is  the  conclusion 
of  science.  But  geology  and  astronomy  have  shown 
that  there  was  a  period  in  the  history  of  this  world 
when  force  and  matter  existed,  but  no  life.  At  a 
certain  stage  of  the  world's  history  life  was  intro- 
duced into  it.  From  where?  Was  it  other  life 
that  produced  it,  and  how  did  it  produce  it?  You  and 
I  naturally  answer,  it  was  produced  by  God,  the 
source  of  life;  it  came  from  Him.  And  when  we  are 
asked,  how?— we  say  it  was  the  Virgin  Birth.  It  was 
not  life  producing  life  according  to  the  ordinary  con- 
ditions and  limitations  under  which  we  see  life  produced 
about  us,  but  it  had  its  origin  through  the  impregnation 
of  the  virgin  earth  from  the  divine  source  of  life.  The 


62  Modern  Christianity 

virgin  earth  became  the  mother  of  that  first  life,  but 
God  Almighty  was  the  father. 

In  this  life  resembles  force  and  matter — that  once  in 
existence  it  propagates  itself,  but  it  differs,  so  far  as 
science  can  perceive,  in  this  important  regard — that 
whereas  force  and  matter  are  always  the  same  in  amount 
and  merely  continue  in  existence,  life  grows  and  multi- 
plies, so  that  one  life  may  be  the  source  of  many  lives ; 
and  again,  while  force  and  matter  are  indestructible, 
so  far  as  science  can  see,  life  is  destructible. 

But  what  is  life?  We  know  it  only  as  an  animating 
force,  appearing  in  matter;  it  is  intangible,  not  to  be 
measured,  and  known  to  us  only  as  it  manifests  itself 
in  and  through  matter.  Whether  it  exists  or  can  exist 
separate  from  matter,  it  is  beyond  the  power  of  science 
to  say,  because  science  has  found  no  means  of  identify- 
ing it  or  determining  it,  but  is  only  aware  that  there  is 
a  principle,  to  which  it  gives  the  name  of  life,  which 
produces  certain  phenomena  in  matter.  But  so  much 
science  does  perceive,  that  there  are  various  kinds  of 
life,  as  vegetable  life,  and  animal  life,  and  in  these 
again  many  divisions  and  manifold  genera,  each  par- 
ticular form  of  life  differing  from  the  other,  and  each 
form  capable  of  propagation  only  by  its  own  kind,  and 
capable  of  propagating  only  its  own  kind. 

Science  has  conceived  the  possibility  of  reducing  all 
of  these  various  forms  and  kinds  of  life  to  one  great  life 
principle,  and  has  sought  to  establish  the  connection 
between  them,  and  to  prove  how  one  may  pass  over 
into  another.  To  a  certain  extent  it  has  succeeded  in 
establishing  the  general  principle  of  the  connection  of 
life,  although  it  has  not  established  in  detail  the  pro- 


The  Mystery  of  Birth  and  Death    63 

cesses  by  which  higher  forms  of  life  are  developed 
from  the  lower.  But  at  last  life  reaches  a  form  different 
from  all  its  other  forms — where  there  is  an  element  com- 
bined with  it  of  self-reflection;  a  being  which  reasons 
upon  its  own  condition,  reasons  out  the  laws  of  its  own 
nature  and  of  the  nature  of  the  universe  in  which  it  ex- 
ists ;  a  being  which  undertakes  to  work  with  and  through 
those  laws,  to  become  a  partner  in  the  control  of  the 
universe — Man,  consciously  aspiring  upward,  aiming 
from  the  outset  to  be  a  god,  and  never  halting  in  his 
progress  through  all  the  ages  in  which  we  know  him. 
The  mere  vitality,  the  mere  life  that  is  in  him  is  not  so 
great  as  that  which  appears  in  certain  other  animals, 
and  his  power  of  propagating  life  is  not  so  great.  The 
amount  of  matter  vitalised  by  each  human  life  is  less 
than  the  amount  of  matter  vitalised  by  the  life  principle 
of  many  other  animals,  but  there  is  a  something  con- 
nected with  that  life  which  differentiates  it  from  all 
other  lives.  This  is  the  something  which  we  call  in- 
telligence, or  reason,  or  spirit.  To  be  sure  this  aspiring, 
upward-growing  something  is  combined  with  another 
element,  so  that  we  find  the  individual  man  falling, 
stumbling,  making  himself  like  the  beasts  that  are 
about  him;  we  find  the  individual,  or  even  many  indi- 
viduals, going  backward — but  the  race  man,  mankind 
as  a  whole,  is  going  always  upward,  impelled  by  what 
appears  to  us  to  be  an  irresistible  force,  and  yet  a  force 
which  he  is  so  far  able  to  comprehend  that  he  can  work 
with  it. 

You  hold  in  your  arms  a  little  human  baby,  seven, 
eight,  ten  pounds  of  matter,  differentiated  from  the 
matter  which  is  about  it  by  that  mysterious  something 


64  Modern  Christianity 

which  you  call  life,  by  means  of  which  it  moves,  and  by 
force  of  which  you  know  that  this  lump  of  matter  will 
develop  and  become  something  different  from  what  now 
it  is;  differentiated  from  the  animal  life  about  it — from 
the  little  kittens  or  puppies — by  a  still  more  wonder- 
ful something  which  you  do  not  seem  to  find  there  at 
the  beginning,  and  yet  which  you  know  will  come. 
It  is  less  intelligent  at  first  than  a  new-born  rabbit. 
When  that  something  comes  into  it  which  makes  the 
difference,  you  cannot  tell,  nor  how  it  comes.  Intelli- 
gence, reason,  spirit— you  name  it  by  different  names, 
you  define  it  by  different  definitions,  and  no  name  and 
definition  is  satisfactory,  because  you  know  so  little 
about  what  it  is — only  that  it  is  a  wonderful  something 
that  has  the  power  of  transforming  that  matter  ani- 
mated with  life,  of  making  it  different  from  everything 
else  that  is  about  it,  lifting  it  above  everything  else 
that  is  in  this  world — but  neither  the  life  nor  the 
spirit  seem  clearly  to  belong  to  that  little  lump  of  mat- 
ter; you  are  only  too  painfully  aware  that  they  are 
alien  to  it,  when  you  watch  the  struggle  to  keep  life  in 
that  little  body,  and  realise  how  easily  the  life  which 
has  come  into  that  matter  may  depart  out  of  it.  How 
does  life  come  into  that  body?  How  does  that  higher 
something  which  you  call  spirit  come?  Whence  does 
it  come?  Have  we  here  again  the  Virgin  Birth?  Was 
human  life,  with  all  that  intellectual,  spiritual  something 
which  distinguishes  it  from  all  other  life,  born  out  of 
other  life,  or  was  there  a  point  where  it  began  to  be  out 
of  nothing — where  the  virgin  conceived  by  the  Holy 
Ghost,  and  a  new  life  of  spirit  began  in  the  world? 
And  where  does  life  go  to?  Can  it  really  be  destroyed, 


The  Mystery  of  Birth  and  Death    65 

or  is  it  only  that  we  are  unable  to  discern  it  when  freed 
from  matter?  Force  and  matter  are  indestructible. 
Can  we  destroy  life,  or  is  it  like  them  indestructible  ? 
Here  you  have  the  third  problem  of  birth  and  death. 

With  regard  to  the  mystery  of  the  origin  and  of  the 
end  of  human  life,  the  life  that  is  combined  with  intellect 
or  spirit,  you  and  I  find  the  answer  to  the  problem — the 
answer  which  God  our  Father  has  taught  us — in  Jesus 
Christ.  Perhaps  it  may  be  that  we  find  the  answer, 
or  a  partial  answer,  to  the  other  problems  also  in  this 
same  Jesus.  From  God  comes  life.  To  God  goes  life. 
If  He  created  force  and  matter,  then  is  He  the  parent 
by  whom  out  of  force  and  matter  life  and  spirit  were 
begotten.  And  it  must  be  remembered,  when  we  seek 
to  understand  the  mysteries  of  the  birth  and  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus,  that  He  was  not  alone  a  man,  but  that 
He  was  also  mankind;  in  whom  we  all  of  us,  with  all 
our  powers  and  attributes,  are  summed  up.  There  is 
a  mystery  surrounding  His  birth;  there  is  a  mystery 
surrounding  His  death  and  resurrection  from  the 
dead;  there  are  difficulties  which  meet  us  when  we 
seek  to  understand  how  these  things  could  be;  but  they 
are  not  difficulties  which  belong  merely  to  His  story. 
They  are  difficulties  which  are  inherent  in  the  very  na- 
ture of  things,  because  we  do  not  know  what  matter  is; 
what  life  is;  how  they  are  related  one  to  another;  what 
are  the  future  possibilities  of  matter. 

If  you  pick  up  the  Gospel  narrative  and  read  the  story 
of  the  disappearance  of  the  body  of  Jesus,  the  empty 
tomb  in  which  that  body  had  been  laid  and  in  which 
none  was  found,  of  the  body  that  came  through  doors, 
appeared  and  disappeared,  was  matter  and  yet  was  not 


66  Modern  Christianity 

matter,  could  be  touched  and  handled,  could  eat  and 
drink,  and  yet,  as  far  as  the  apostles  could  understand, 
set  at  naught  some  of  the  fundamental  laws  of  matter — 
you  will  see  that  they  were  mystified  by  the  phenomena 
as  much  as  you  or  I .  These  are  naive,  simple  statements 
of  men  who  could  not  pretend  to  explain  the  way  in 
which  these  things  were  done,  and  the  very  naivete* 
and  simplicity  with  which  the  difficulties  are  stated, 
without  any  attempt  at  explanation,  are,  as  the  his- 
torian perceives,  the  best  evidence  of  the  truthfulness 
of  the  narrative.  It  is  impossible  to  disbelieve,  and 
those  who  have  sought  to  explain  away  the  facts  ac- 
cording to  our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  matter  have 
only  introduced  greater  difficulties  into  the  narrative, 
and  involved  themselves  in  hopeless  contradiction. 
So,  in  one  volume  Renan  asserts  that  without  doubt 
Mary  of  Magdala,  with  the  help  of  some  of  the  apostles, 
came  and  stole  the  body  of  Jesus  away,  and  in  another 
he  asserts  with  equal  positiveness  that  the  assertion 
that  Mary  Magdalene,  or  some  of  the  apostles  stole 
the  body  away,  is  absolutely  without  foundation  and 
evidently  false. 

You  and  I  speculate,  and  must  speculate,  on  such 
things.  We  must  use  our  reason ;  but  if  any  one,  ultra- 
rationalist  on  the  one  side  or  ultra-orthodox  on  the  other 
should  come  to  me  and  say — I  can  explain  in  their  de- 
tails these  events  of  the  birth  and  death  of  Jesus,  I  will 
not  believe  him  until  he  first  show  me  that  he  can  ex- 
plain the  mystery  of  the  birth  and  death  of  matter,  and 
the  birth  and  the  hereafter  of  life.  When  our  know- 
ledge has  advanced  so  far  that  we  can  create  and  destroy 
matter,  and  understand  the  relation  to  that  matter  of 


The  Mystery  of  Birth  and  Death    67 

life;  when  we  are  able  to  place  our  finger  upon  life  and 
say,  It  is  here,  and  analyse  it  and  define  it — then,  and 
not  till  then,  shall  we  be  able  fully  to  understand  the 
mystery  of  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus — born  of  the 
Virgin  Mary,  rose  from  the  dead  on  the  third  day,  who 
carriedour  humanity  back  to  God  our  Father  in  Heaven. 
But  the  strange  story  which  the  apostles  told  of  the 
body  which  vanished  from  the  grave,  of  the  man  with 
whom  they  walked  and  whom  they  knew  not  until  He 
was  revealed  to  them  in  the  breaking  of  bread,  of  Him 
who  appeared  in  bodily  form  in  the  closed  room  where 
they  were  assembled  and  brake  bread  and  ate  it  with 
them,  and  bade  them  touch  the  holes  of  the  nails  in 
His  hands  and  the  spear  in  His  side — this  strange  story 
sounds  to  me  like  a  dim  prophecy  of  the  hereafter  of 
matter,  when  ceasing  to  be  matter  it  shall  return  to 
Him  from  whom  it  came  out,  to  the  All  Father,  God. 


THE  REAL  HEAVEN 

ACTS  i.,  1 1 :  Ye  men  of  Galilee,  why  stand  ye  gazing  into 
heaven  ? 

WITH  the  Birth  and  Resurrection  the  Ascension 
is  counted  the  third  great  feast  of  the  Incar- 
nation. There  is  no  mention  of  the  Ascension  in  the 
Gospels  of  St.  Matthew  and  St.  John.  They  record  the 
Resurrection  and  various  appearances  of  Jesus  to  and 
among  His  disciples  and  apostles.  It  is  manifest,  how- 
ever, from  their  account  that  after  a  relatively  brief 
period  during  which  He  thus  appeared  among  them 
He  departed  from  them  altogether.  It  is  clear,  also, 
from  the  accounts  in  St.  Matthew  and  St.  John,  that  it 
was  the  expectation  of  those  writers  that  Jesus,  hav- 
ing now  departed  from  them,  would  shortly  come  back 
again  in  glory.  An  addition  to  the  original  Gospel  of 
St.  Mark  tells  us  that  Jesus  was  "received  up  into 
heaven  and  sat  on  the  right  hand  of  God,"  and  there 
is  no  doubt  that  in  that  sense  all  the  Gospel  writers, 
and  St.  Paul  also,  believed  in  the  ascension  into  heaven. 
But  only  St.  Luke  relates  the  story  of  the  actual 
physical  ascension,  once  at  the  close  of  the  Gospel  which 
bears  his  name,  and  once  at  the  beginning  of  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles.  It  is  on  those  two  accounts,  or  that 
one  account,  that  the  external  expression  by  the  Church 
of  its  belief  in  the  Ascension  may  be  said  to  be  founded. 

68 


The  Real  Heaven  69 

Three  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  when  the  English 
Prayer-book  was  coming  into  existence,  men  thought 
they  knew  very  exactly  how  the  Ascension  took  place, 
and  accordingly,  in  the  fourth  of  those  Articles  of  Re- 
ligion which  have  since  been  relegated  to  the  attic  of 
our  Prayer-book  you  find  this  statement:  "Christ  did 
truly  rise  again  from  death  and  took  again  his  body, 
with  flesh,  bones,  and  all  things  appertaining  to  the 
perfection  of  Man's  nature;  wherewith  he  ascended 
into  Heaven,  and  there  sitteth,  until  he  return  to 
judge  all  Men  at  the  last  day."  When  men  conceived 
of  a  physical  heaven,  existing  somewhere  in  the  skies 
above  our  heads,  this  expression  of  the  Ascension 
created  no  difficulties.  To-day  it  contradicts  not  only 
what  we  know  of  physical  science,  but  also  what  we 
believe  we  have  learned  of  the  nature  and  being  of  our 
Lord  and  of  the  very  nature  of  divinity. 

The  beginning  of  our  Lord's  life  on  earth,  the  way 
in  which  God  came  into  man,  His  victory  over  death, 
His  departure  from  earth,  the  way  in  which  humanity 
was  lifted  into  divinity,  are  alike  shrouded  in  mystery. 
We  note  the  event,  but  when  we  try  to  explain  we  can 
explain  only  that  part  which  touches  humanity.  The 
side  which  touches  divinity  transcends  our  compre- 
hension and  our  expression.  Any  language  that  we 
use  must  be  imperfect. 

All  of  you  have  seen  a  comet.  First  you  read  in  the 
papers  that  some  astronomer,  with  his  great  telescope, 
has  located  a  comet  in  such  and  such  a  constellation. 
By  and  bye  it  becomes  visible  to  the  naked  eye,  very 
faint  and  vague  at  first,  growing  larger  and  more  dis- 
tinct as  it  draws  nearer;  and  then,  after  having  touched 


70  Modern  Christianity 

our  world  for  a  brief  space,  it  begins  to  vanish,  break- 
ing up  and  fading  away.  We  know  that  the  comet  was 
in  existence  before  it  appeared  to  our  eyes,  or  even  to 
the  eyes  of  the  astronomers  looking  through  the  strong- 
est telescopes  that  have  been  invented.  We  know  that 
it  continues  to  exist  after  it  has  passed  out  of  our  sight 
and  ken.  Very  roughly  I  may  use  this  figure  of  the 
comet  to  express  the  relation  of  the  Incarnation  to 
our  life  here,  but  only  very  roughly,  for  the  figure  is 
incomplete  and  imperfect. 

But  not  only  is  the  Incarnation  mysterious,  life  itself 
is  a  mystery,  a  mystery  in  its  beginning,  a  mystery  in 
its  ending.  What  life  is,  how  it  originates,  we  do  not 
know.  We  cannot  analyse  it;  gone,  we  cannot  repro- 
duce it.  We  know  it  only  as  it  expresses  itself  in  mat- 
ter. Whence  comes  the  life  that  enters  into  organic 
matter  and  so  strangely  transforms  it  and  changes  it, 
is  dependent  upon  it  and  yet  transcends  it?  Take  the 
life  out  of  this  organic  matter,  and  what  is  left  ?  A  form 
that  in  the  briefest  time  decays,  corrupts,  and  is  dis- 
solved again  into  the  elements  about  it.  Where  has 
the  life  gone  to?  The  relation  of  life  to  matter  is  mys- 
terious, and  equally  mysterious  the  relation  of  spirit 
to  matter.  What  are  you  and  I?  We  are  not  these 
bodies  in  which  we  live,  and  yet  we  are  dependent 
upon  them.  We  are  conditioned  by  them,  and  yet  we 
are  not  contained  in  them.  Take  away  an  arm  or  a  leg : 
have  we  cut  off  so  much  of  the  spirit  or  does  the  spirit 
remain  unaffected?  Where  is  its  abode?  We  know 
the  seats  of  life;  where  is  the  seat  of  spirit? 

How  do  I  stand  related  to  this  body  ?  Am  1  a  part 
of  it  ?  Is  it  a  part  of  me,  or  is  it  merely  the  tenement 


The  Real  Heaven  71 

which  I  inhabit  for  a  while;  and  if  the  latter,  what  be- 
comes of  me  when  I  have  gone  out  of  this  tenement  ? 
Do  I  need  another  body  in  which  to  live  ?  What  shall 
be  the  nature  of  that  body? 

With  our  increased  knowledge  we  can  no  longer  give 
to  these  questions  those  ready  answers,  or  those  expla- 
nations and  definitions  of  those  answers  which  seemed 
so  plain  and  simple  to  our  ancestors.  The  increase  of 
our  knowledge,  the  opening  up  to  us  of  vast  worlds, 
realms  of  force  and  life,  revealing  possibilities  which 
our  ancestors  never  dreamed  of,  have  given  resurrection 
and  ascension  a  newer  and  vastly  more  glorious  mean- 
ing, but  in  doing  so  they  have  taken  away  from  us  that 
precision  of  definition  which  enabled  men  to  write  the 
Articles  of  Religion,  from  which  I  quoted  a  moment 
since.  Now  and  then  I  find  men  complaining  because 
of  this  and  saying:  our  faith  is  being  taken  from  us; 
for  the  literal  facts  our  fathers  believed  in  these  new 
teachers  are  proposing  things  vague  and  intangible, 
which  they  tell  us  are  the  spiritual  verities  that  con- 
stitute the  real  essence  of  the  faith.  To  us  they  sound 
like  meaningless  words.  L  Without  something  tangible 
how  can  I  believe  ? 

I  scarcely  know  how  to  answer  those  who  ask  ques- 
tions such  as  this.  But  this  I  may  say:  There  are  cer- 
tain things,  and  those  among  the  most  real  facts  of  the 
universe,  facts  which  underlie  the  things  you  see  and  so 
can  define,  which  can  be  expressed  only  as  it  were  in  the 
language  of  poetry.  The  highest  reaches  of  philosophy 
and  the  highest  reaches  of  theology,  which  is  the  philo- 
sophy of  religion,  are  in  a  sense  poetic.  Indeed  I  may 
say  that  the  highest  reaches  of  mathematics,  called 


72  Modern  Christianity 

the  most  precise  of  all  sciences,  are  poetic.  When  the 
mathematician  reasons  of  the  lines  which  approach 
one  another  through  infinity  and  yet  never  meet,  when 
he  tells  you  of  lines  diverging  to  infinity,  he  is  really, 
with  all  the  precision  of  his  science,  in  the  same  realm 
of  the  inapprehensible,  of  that  which  transcends  ex- 
perience and  yet  which  appeals  to  reason,  as  the  philo- 
sopher or  the  theologian.  All  these  are  things  which 
men  cannot  touch  nor  handle  nor  taste,  but  the  more 
man  advances  in  knowledge  the  more  of  this  sort  of 
truth  he  learns  to  know  and  believe.  To  the  man  who 
has  not  studied  the  higher  mathematics  are  a  bewilder- 
ment. Their  fundamental  propositions  seem  to  him 
unreal  and  vague,  whereas  to  the  man  who  has  studied 
them  all  is  precision ;  and  yet  it  is  impossible  for  him  to 
define  or  explain  those  propositions  to  the  man  whose 
reason  is  not  sufficiently  developed  in  that  particular 
direction  to  enable  him  to  comprehend  the  theory. 

Now,  to  turn  back  to  the  matter  of  the  Ascension, 
think  what  the  old  idea  of  the  universe  was.  You  all 
have  read  of  the  ancient  miracle  plays,  where  the  stage 
was  arranged  on  three  levels.  The  highest  story  was 
heaven,  the  middle  story  earth,  and  the  lowest  story 
hell.  This  represented  the  idea  which,  on  into  the 
Middle  Ages,  scholar  and  peasant  alike  entertained  of 
the  universe.  A  world  round  and  flat,  spanned  by  the 
arch  of  heaven,  with  hell  beneath, — this  was  easy  to 
understand.  Such  a  conception  was  the  very  common- 
place of  life.  All  language  was  framed  on  that  idea,  the 
language  of  natural  science  as  of  theology.  Even  to-day, 
in  our  ordinary  forms  of  speech,  we  have  not  divested 
ourselves  of  the  old  language,  albeit  the  conception  of 


The  Real  Heaven  73 

the  universe  which  gave  the  meaning  to  that  language 
has  changed.  It  never  occurs  to  us  that  there  is  any 
unreality  or  falsehood  in  our  speaking  of  the  rising  of 
the  sun,  although  the  smallest  child  in  a  grammar 
school  can  tell  you  that  the  sun  does  not  rise  and  go 
around  the  earth  and  descend  and  set  on  the  other 
side  again,  as  is  implied  in  the  language  which  we  use, 
and  which  was  the  belief  of  the  men  who  first  used  that 
language.  How  much  more  men  have  now  learned 
about  the  universe,  and  what  struggles  and  even  perse- 
cutions preceded  the  adoption  of  each  new  great  fact 
of  knowledge!  The  Copernican  system,  evolution — to 
mention  only  two  of  those  things  which  absolutely 
changed  the  ideas  men  entertained  of  the  world,  and 
rendered  it  necessary  to  restate  everything  which  men 
thought — by  what  throes  and  travail  they  were  born ! 
And  indeed  the  birth  pangs  of  evolution  are  not  yet 
altogether  passed. 

To-day  it  sometimes  seems  as  though  the  advances 
in  knowledge  are  so  rapid  that  we  scarcely  appreciate 
what  they  mean.  Take  electricity:  those  of  you  of  my 
own  age  who  studied  physical  science  at  the  same  time 
that  I  did  would  be  laughed  at  if  you  were  to  pro- 
pound to-day  as  facts  the  things  which  we  were  then 
taught  and  which  we  believed  with  regard  to  the 
nature  of  electricity.  Electricity  itself  is  the  same. 
We  know  much  more  about  it  and  we  use  it  much  more 
effectively  to-day.  I  doubt  whether  we  are  as  exact 
in  our  definition  and  explanation  of  its  nature  and 
its  essence  now,  however,  as  men  were  fifty  years  ago, 
The  very  increase  of  our  knowledge  has  revealed  the 
vastness  of  our  ignorance,  and  forbids  those  easy  defmi- 


74  Modern  Christianity 

tions  which  satisfied  us  in  an  earlier  stage.  This  lack 
of  precision  does  not  mean  that  our  knowledge  is  less, 
but  that  it  is  greater.  Or  take  that  new  metal,  radium, 
and  consider  the  suggestions  with  regard  to  matter 
itself  which  have  come  from  the  observation  of  its 
strange  properties  !  Everything  seems  to  be  changing 
in  the  scientific  world.  Does  that  mean  that  we 
know  less  about  matter  and  our  universe?  It  means 
that  we  know  so  much  more  that  the  definitions 
which  were  once  given  no  longer  suffice  us.  So 
also  the  world  has  learned  more  of  Christ  and  more 
of  God,  more  of  the  mysteries  of  the  Divine  na- 
ture and  more  of  the  mysteries  of  our  own  human 
nature;  and  it  is  because  we  have  learned  more  of 
these  things  that  men  are  refusing  to  be  content  with 
the  old  definitions  and  the  old  explanations. 

A  while  ago,  almost  any  evening,  less  than  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  from  this  spot  you  might  have  seen  a  crowd 
of  men,  women,  and  children  gathered,  waiting  for 
the  appearance  of  a  ghost,  which  manifested  itself  in 
the  air  against  the  wall  of  a  building.  The  larger  part 
of  the  crowd  probably  consisted  of  idle  curiosity  seek- 
ers, and  doubtless  many  of  them  knew  that  such  a 
ghostly  appearance  was  impossible.  But  a  con- 
siderable number  of  those  persons  were  still  in  that 
stage  of  ignorance  with  regard  to  the  universe  about 
them  in  which  it  seems  possible  that  spirits  should 
manifest  themselves  in  that  particular  manner.  There 
are  yet  among  us,  with  all  our  schools,  with  all  our  edu- 
cation, a  great  number  of  very  ignorant  men  and  women 
among  whom  survive  beliefs  which  belong  historically 
to  a  period  centuries  ago.  In  some  parts  of  the  world, 


The  Real  Heaven  75 

like  Palestine,  you  will  find  the  mass  of  the  people  still 
in  the  same  condition  of  ignorance  and  consequent 
superstition  in  which  they  were  one  thousand,  two  thou- 
sand, or  three  thousand  years  ago.  To  such  people  any- 
thing may  happen.  What  they  call  miracles  may  occur 
at  any  moment;  but  on  the  other  hand  they  are  utterly 
incapable  of  comprehending  the  greatest  and  most 
really  wonderful  miracles  revealed  in  God's  dealings 
in  the  universe  about  us  and  in  human  history.  Such 
things  transcend  their  knowledge,  or  if  they  see  the 
fact  they  fail  to  grasp  its  miracle.  Their  interest  and 
their  comprehension  are  like  those  of  little  children. 
To  these  people  it  is  always  apt  to  seem  that  the  man 
who  does  not  believe  that  a  ghost  may  suddenly  show 
itself  lacks  belief  in  the  spirit  world,  that  the  man  who 
does  not  believe  such  a  thing  is  possible  has  no  faith  in 
miracles ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  the  man  who  knows 
more  about  the  laws  of  the  universe,  who  believes  with 
all  his  heart  in  the  almighty  power  of  God,  who  inspires 
and  who  is  that  law,  to  the  man  who  is  stirred  profound- 
ly day  by  day  by  the  miraculous  which  he  sees  about 
him  and  within  him,  who  really  believes  in  a  spirit 
world  as  a  reality  more  real  than  this  material  world, 
the  belief  of  those  others  seems  unreal,  childish,  and 
material. 

But  if  we  dp  not  believe  in  a  heaven  that  is  somewhere 
above  our  heads,  located  in  some  place,  on  a  Mount 
Olympus,  on  the  mountain  of  God,  in  some  star,  or  be- 
yond the  farthest  ether,  in  some  remote  and  limitless 
unknown,  what  then  is  heaven?  From  what  we  have 
learned  in  later  years  of  the  properties  of  matter,  the 
way  solid  substances  are  permeated  with  what,  for 


76  Modern  Christianity 

lack  of  better  words,  we  call  ether,  of  the  waves  or  par- 
ticles of  matter  which  pass  through  other  matter,  comes 
to  us  a  suggestion  of  possibilities  which  our  forefathers 
never  dreamed  of:  possibilities  which  we  can  yet  scarce 
translate  into  language,  at  which  we  can  only  hint,  but 
which  are  full  of  hope  and  joy,  giving  us  a  new  con- 
ception of  the  closeness  of  God,  of  the  abiding,  actual 
presence  of  the  Saviour,  whom  yet  we  cannot  see  nor 
touch;  possibilities  of  the  presence  with  and  among  us 
of  heaven — a  heaven  no  longer  remote  in  space,  but 
close  at  hand,  in  and  through  the  very  place  in  which 
we  exist.  And  this  makes  of  life  a  new  thing;  it  reads 
new  meaning  into  those  old  words  of  the  writer  of 
the  Hebrews,  telling  of  the  great  cloud  of  witnesses 
which  compass  us  about.  Under  the  influence  of 
such  thought  the  Ascension  becomes  more  real,  and, 
if  I  may  so  express  myself,  more  practical,  some- 
thing which  touches  our  present  life,  which  concerns 
us  every  day.  As  the  birth  of  Christ  means  that 
God,  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being, 
was  verily  incarnate,  very  man,  so  the  Ascension  means 
that  very  man  is  in  and  with  very  God,  that  the  hu- 
manity of  Jesus  is  divine,  and  that  therefore  also  our 
humanity  may  become  divine,  being  united  with  God. 
It  opens  to  us  limitless  possibilities,  man  exalted  to  the 
right  hand  of  God.  Oh,  the  glory  that  it  sheds  on  our 
lives,  the  inspiration  that  it  offers  to  the  whole  human 
race!  No  wonder  that  angel  messengers  bade  the  men 
of  Galilee  cease  staring  into  the  skies,  forgetful  of  their 
work  on  earth. 

1  take  it  that  the  whole  story  of  the  Incarnation, 
from  birth  to  resurrection  and  ascension,  teaches  us  this 


The  Real  Heaven  77 

truth: — that  this  possibility  of  divine  being  in  us  can 
become  a  reality  only  as  we  enter  into  union  with  God, 
that  Jesus  lived  among  us  to  bring  us  into  such  union 
with  God,  and  that  when  we  say  we  accept  Him  as  our 
Saviour  and  cast  ourselves  upon  Him  for  salvation, 
we  mean  that  we  surrender  ourselves,  our  will  for  sel- 
fish pleasure  and  self-indulgence,  and  self-acquisition, 
and  self-glory  to  Him,  by  entering  into  His  life  of  ser- 
vice and  of  sacrifice.  That  and  that  only  is  to  believe 
on  Him,  and  though  we  no  longer  see  Him,  we  need  not 
stand  looking  into  heaven  to  find  Him.  Here  on  earth, 
about  us,  among  us,  we  must  first  seek  Him;  here  we 
may  enter  into  His  life;  and  thus,  made  one  with  Him, 
we  have  already  entered  into  heaven,  albeit  our  eyes 
be  not  yet  opened  to  behold  the  glory  of  it. 


THE  PERSONALITY  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

ST.  JOHN  xvi.,  7 :  It  is  expedient  for  you  that  I  go  away : 
for  if  I  go  not  away,  the  Comforter  will  not  come  unto  you  ; 
but  if  I  go,  I  will  send  him  unto  you. 

WE  have  no  one  word  which  exactly  translates  the 
Greek  word  here  rendered  Comforter.  If  we 
translate  one  meaning  of  the  word  into  English,  we  leave 
the  other  meanings  untranslated.  The  Greek  word 
means  advocate,  or  helper, — the  counsel  who  pleads 
your  cause  before  the  judge.  So  it  is  used  in  the  First 
Epistle  General  of  St.  John,  second  chapter,  first  verse: 
"  If  any  man  sin,  we  have  an  Advocate  with  the  Father, 
Jesus  Christ  the  righteous:  and  he  is  the  propitiation 
for  our  sins."  The  same  word  is  used  there  which  is 
used  in  this  passage,  but  there  it  is  used  of  Christ,  who 
in  His  exaltation  is  our  Advocate  before  the  Father 
in  heaven,  and  it  is  translated  Advocate.  Here,  where 
it  is  rendered  Comforter,  it  is  used  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
who  was  to  take  the  place  of  Christ  with  the  Apostles 
after  His  ascension,  to  lead  them  to  a  deeper  knowledge 
of  the  truth  by  His  counsel — the  Spirit  of  Truth,  He 
is  also  called  in  St.  John's  Gospel, — and  to  impart  to 
them  the  divine  help  needed  to  enable  them  to  undergo 
trials  and  persecutions  on  behalf  of  Christ.  He  was 
to  take  the  place  of  Christ,  to  bring  to  their  knowledge 
those  things  which  Christ  had  spoken  to  them;  to  teach 
them  the  meaning  of  Jesus'  life  as  they  had  not  under- 

78 


The  Personality  of  the  Spirit        79 

stood  it  while  He  was  with  them.  He  was  to  be  a  com- 
forter, giving  them  divine  strength  in  their  hour  of 
weakness,  in  their  loneliness  giving  them  assurance  of 
the  presence  of  God. 

My  dear  friends,  some  of  you  have  taught  me  in  your 
lives  a  great  deal  about  the  meaning  of  this  promise. 
I  have  seen  some  of  you  bereft  of  those  whom  you  loved, 
and  as  I  have  watched  you  I  have  seen  a  new  something 
come  into  your  lives,  which  has  raised  them  above  the 
level  of  your  former  lives.  I  have  seen  a  man,  uncouth 
and  rough,  self-assertive  and  inconsiderate  of  the  more 
tender,  higher  feelings  of  those  about  him, — lacking  in 
delicacy,  I  suppose  we  should  say, — refined  and  made 
tactful  and  delicately  considerate  through  bereavement. 
I  have  seen  selfish  lives  made  unselfish ;  and  sometimes 
even  faces  have  been  transfigured  so  that  as  I  have 
looked  I  have  felt  that  I  saw  the  radiance  of  heaven, 
the  beauty  of  the  spirit  world. 

But  how  does  all  this  come  about?  It  is  not  bereave- 
ment alone  that  produces  it.  Some  of  the  most  painful 
sights  that  I  have  ever  seen  have  been  connected  with 
bereavement, — characters  hardened  and  embittered, 
lives  made  morose  and  sullen.  It  is  not  bereave- 
ment, but  spiritual  intercourse.  It  is  that  in  one  case  a 
Comforter  has  come  and  in  the  other  case  there  is  none ; 
that  in  the  one  case  a  sense  of  spiritual  communion 
exists,  in  the  other  there  is  only  the  sense  of  loss.  How 
beautiful  it  is  when  the  life  of  the  one  that  is  gone  on 
continues  itself  spiritually  here  in  the  hearts  and  lives 
of  its  dear  ones, — the  same  life,  only  purified  of  its  dross, 
made  more  beautiful,  the  good  parts  alone  surviving. 
Have  you  not  known  one,  dear  to  you  it  may  be,  who 


8o  Modern  Christianity 

lived  a  beautiful  life  here,  a  life  far  from  perfect  truly, 
but  still  beautiful  for  some  at  least  of  its  traits,  and  then 
when  that  life  passed  on  into  the  beyond  these  good 
traits  and  beautiful  traits  have  come  home  to  you,  or 
to  those  who  were  still  closer  to  the  one  that  is  gone 
than  you  are ;  have  come  home  with  a  force  which  they 
did  not  possess  while  that  person  was  here  ?  They  have 
been  dwelt  upon,  lived  over,  they  have  moulded  and  af- 
fected your  life,  or  the  lives  of  those  about  you,  and 
then  they  have  gone  forth  out  of  your  life  to  help  and 
bless  others,  and  mould  them  in  their  turn  into  some- 
thing better  and  higher.  It  is  in  this  wise  that  the  dear 
ones  that  have  gone  live  on  spiritually  here  on  earth. 
It  is  thus  that  a  Comforter  and  Helper,  an  Advocate, 
comes  to  us  from  them,  assuring  us  of  what  was  good 
and  beautiful  and  true  in  their  lives ;  holding  it  up  be- 
fore us  as  their  lesson,  their  teaching,  their  will;  and 
out  of  the  very  love  which  we  felt  toward  them  making 
an  impression  on  our  hearts  and  lives  which  they  other- 
wise never  could  have  made.  While  they  lived  with  us 
and  we  could  see  them,  hear  them,  speak  with  them, 
touch  them,  there  were  other  things  that  we  thought  of. 
Those  things  which  were  the  divine  in  them,  the  very 
best  and  highest,  were  covered  over,  obscured  in  our 
apprehension  by  so  much  else  that  their  lives  seemed 
to  affect  ours  comparatively  but  little.  Much  as  we 
loved  them,  they  never,  while  they  were  with  us,  could 
mould  us  for  good  or  evil  as  now  they  do  when  they 
have  gone  on. 

Ah,  beloved,  you  have  all  seen  that  which  I  have  seen ! 
You  have  all  known  spiritual  influences  working  on  the 
lives  of  some  who  are  here  among  us!  It  is  my  part 


The  Personality  of  the  Spirit        81 

Sunday  after  Sunday  to  preach  to  you  from  this  pulpit. 
It  may  be  that  with  God's  help  I  bring  you  sometimes 
lessons  of  wisdom  or  comfort,  but  if  I  do  it  is  largely  be- 
cause I  learn  them  as  I  go  in  and  out  among  you  and 
see  God's  Spirit  working  in  you;  as  I  come  to  under- 
stand from  your  lives  the  meaning  of  the  life  and  teach- 
ing of  Christ  Jesus.  Out  of  what  I  have  seen  among 
you  of  this  spiritual  presence,  of  the  greater  power  that 
comes  from  that  than  from  the  actual  living  presence, 
there  has  come  to  me  a  better  understanding  of  the 
words  of  our  Lord  about  the  need  that  He  must  depart, 
about  the  Comforter  that  He  would  send  to  us  all. 

I  do  not  wish  to  press  too  far  this  explanation  of 
Christ's  teaching  about  the  Comforter  who  should  come 
to  take  His  place,  and  yet  I  think  that  you  may,  if  you 
have  sometimes  been  perplexed  about  that  Comforter, 
find  help  in  this  suggestion.  What  the  spiritual  influ- 
ence of  the  lives  which  you  and  I  have  known  is  to  us 
individually,  that  the  Holy  Spirit  whom  Jesus  sends 
is  to  the  world  in  relation  to  Him.  While  Jesus  was  here 
with  His  Apostles,  much  as  they  loved  Him,  they  could 
not  grasp  His  teaching  nor  the  meaning  of  His  life. 
Do  you  remember  how  when  He  and  they  were  on  their 
way  together  to  Jerusalem,  where  He  was  to  be  crucified, 
they  were  quarrelling  with  one  another  as  to  who  should 
have  the  posts  of  honour  in  His  kingdom?  Their  hearts 
were  full  of  selfish  interests.  It  did  not  mean  that  they 
did  not  love  Him,  but  it  meant  that  they  did  not  grasp 
the  real  meaning  of  His  life  and  teaching,  the  real  nature 
of  His  divinity  and  of  His  kingdom.  It  meant,  more- 
over, that  in  their  personal  attachment  to  Him  they 
felt  a  jealousy  of  one  another,  each  desiring  the  closest 


82  Modern  Christianity 

place  and  closest  contact  for  themselves,  and  begrudging 
it  to  one  another. 

His  death  did  not  diminish  their  affection  for  Him, 
it  multiplied  it  many-fold,  and  it  purified  it  so  that  there 
was  no  longer  envy  or  jealousy,  or  even  thought  of  self 
in  their  love.  The  divine  became  clearer  to  them  and 
more  glorious,  and  His  life  assumed  a  meaning  which 
without  that  death  and  separation  it  never  could 
have  had.  Happier,  in  one  sense,  I  cannot  say  that 
their  lives  were,  when  Jesus  was  taken  from  them;  no- 
bler, and  greater,  and  higher  they  were,  however,  with 
a  capacity  for  happiness  which  they  did  not  possess  be- 
fore, for  a  higher  happiness,  a  grander  happiness.  Jesus 
had  sent  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  the  Comforter,  the  Ad- 
vocate, the  Helper,  to  take  His  place,  and  that  Spirit 
had  made  clear  the  truth  which  was  hidden  from  their 
eyes  before,  and  had  helped  them  into  a  new  and  higher 
life. 

Now  it  may  seem  to  you  at  first  thought  that  that 
Spirit  is  only  an  influence.  I  think  it  is  more  difficult 
for  people  to  understand  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  a  person 
than  for  them  to  understand  that  Father  and  Son  are 
persons.  Perhaps  that  is  the  reason  why  in  the  actual 
practice  of  religion  the  Spirit  is  so  apt  to  be  forgotten. 
The  early  liturgies  of  the  Church  are  full  of  the  thought 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  All  blessing  takes  place  through  the 
Holy  Spirit,  by  the  presence  and  indwelling  of  the 
Spirit.  The  bread  and  the  wine  of  the  Lord's  Supper 
are  sanctified  by  the  Spirit;  the  water  in  Baptism  is 
sanctified  by  the  Spirit  to  the  mystical  washing  away 
of  sins.  But  as  you  go  on  in  the  history  of  the  Church 
you  find,  at  least  in  the  West,  this  doctrine  of  the  Spirit 


The  Personality  of  the  Spirit        83 

disappearing,  until  at  the  time  of  the  Reformation  you 
may  say  that,  so  far  as  the  liturgical  use  of  the  Roman 
Church,  and  of  all  its  dependent  Western  Churches,  is 
concerned,  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit  had  been 
abandoned.  Men  asked  for  something  tangible,  even 
material.  Father,  Son,  gave  them  tangible  and  mate- 
rial ideas;  but  even  these  did  not  seem  to  be  near  enough, 
present  enough;  and  so  the  Virgin  and  all  the  saints 
came  in  as  the  objects  of  prayer  and  worship. 

We  have  gone  back  to  the  primitive  use  in  the  Holy 
Communion,  in  Baptism,  in  all  our  services.  We  pray 
for  the  blessing  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  recognising  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  is  the  present  person  of  the  Trinity,  the  one 
with  whom  we  come  individually  in  contact  here  and 
now,  and  through  whom  we  enter  into  communion 
with  Son  and  Father.  But  for  all  that,  I  think  that 
many  people  feel  that  there  is  a  remoteness  and  a  vague- 
ness in  this  doctrine  of  the  Spirit,  because  our  idea  of 
what  is  meant  by  person  in  the  divinity  is  false.  We 
are  always  thinking  of  the  persons  in  the  divinity  as 
being  persons  like  ourselves,  which  is  entirely  incorrect. 
It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realise  the  existence  of  anything 
that  is  not  material.  Force,  power,  influence,  seem  to 
us  unreal  things,  only  modes  of  communication.  Mat- 
ter, which  is  tangible  to  our  outward  senses,  seems  to 
us  to  be  the  real  thing.  But  science  is  teaching  us  more 
and  more  that  matter  is  the  unreal  thing,  that  it  is  only 
a  mode  of  force,  a  mode  of  power;  that  the  real  thing  is 
not  matter,  but  the  force,  the  influence,  the  spirit  that 
is  behind  it.  Your  true  person  and  my  true  person  are 
not  our  outward  forms.  Let  one  that  does  not  know  us, 
that  has  never  seen  us  before,  come  and  look  at  us.  He 


84  Modern  Christianity 

sees  a  certain  amount  of  flesh  and  blood,  clothed  in  cer- 
tain conventional  garments,  so  that  but  a  small  part  of 
the  surface  of  this  flesh  and  blood  is  exposed  to  sight. 
He  could  tell  you  that  we  weigh  about  so  much,  that  we 
are  about  so  tall,  that  we  have  dark  hair  or  light  hair, 
blue  eyes,  or  brown  or  black,  a  fair  skin  or  a  dark  skin, 
sallow  or  ruddy,  and  the  like.  But  does  that  describe 
your  person  or  my  person?  Is  that  you  or  I?  We  are 
what  we  stand  for,  what  we  have  done,  what  clusters 
about  us.  A  little  of  our  nature,  of  ourselves,  may  look 
out  through  our  faces  or  our  eyes;  more  speaks  in  our 
voices  and  the  thoughts  that  we  express,  and  still  more 
tells  itselt  in  our  deeds.  It  is  the  spiritual  existence,  the 
unseen,  the  intangible,  with  all  its  thoughts,  fancyings, 
and  imaginings,  its  aspirations  and  its  achievements 
clustering  about  it,  that  makes  the  real  self,  the  true 
you  or  I. 

So  it  is  with  divinity:  Fatherhood  rather  than  a  fa- 
ther, Sonship  rather  than  a  son,  should  perhaps  be  our 
method  of  designating  the  first  and  second  persons  of 
the  Trinity,  so  that  we  may  get  rid  of  the  false  and 
material  idea  of  person  which  we  so  often  have;  and 
then  we  should  better  realise  the  reality,  the  person- 
ality of  the  Spirit  of  God,  representing  Jesus  Christ 
here  on  earth,  bringing  home  more  and  more  to  the 
minds  of  men  the  beauty  and  glory  of  that  life  and  char- 
acter, making  the  world  feel  more  and  more  that  that 
is  true  divinity,  inspiring  in  your  heart  and  in  mine  an 
ever  greater  and  truer  love  for  Jesus  the  Christ;  a  love 
which  must  renovate,  change,  regenerate  our  natures. 
It  is  by  that  love  of  the  true  Jesus  the  Christ,  that 
spiritual  love  which  shows  us  not  merely  a  man  work- 


The  Personality  of  the  Spirit        85 

ing  among  His  disciples  here  on  earth,  but  which  brings 
home  to  us  all  He  meant,  and  all  He  stood  for,  revealing 
Him  to  us  in  the  good  and  the  divine  in  all  that  is  about 
us;  revealing  Him  to  us  in  everything  that  is  best  in 
ourselves,  by  calling  out  of  us  love  and  self-sacrifice 
wherever  we  see  any  one  that  has  need  of  us — it  is  by 
that  love  that  we  are  truly  united  with  Christ  and  with 
the  Father. 

To-day,  Whitsunday,  the  Church  commemorates  the 
divine  gift  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to  the  world  in  a  sense  in 
which  the  world  had  not  possessed  it  before,— the  Holy 
Ghost,  not  merely  as  the  spirit  of  good,  the  divine  work- 
ing in  man,  as  it  had  always  worked ;  but  the  Holy  Ghost 
the  Comforter,  the  Advocate  of  Jesus  Christ  in  the  world ; 
advocating  with  the  world  His  life  as  the  perfect  divine 
life,  as  salvation  from  sin,  comforting  the  world  with  the 
promise  of  the  fulfilment  of  that  life  in  all  mankind, 
comforting  the  world,  in  a  little  corner  of  which  Jesus 
the  Nazarene  had  lived,  and  taught,  and  worked,  and 
suffered,  by  holding  up  before  all  the  world  the  glorious 
picture  of  the  life  that  man  may  live;  glorifying  human 
life  by  the  vision. 


THE  JUDGMENT 

ST.  JOHN  iii.,  17-19:  God  sent  not  the  Son  into  the  world  to 
judge  the  world;  but  that  the  world  should  be  saved  through 
him.  He  that  belie veth  on  him  is  not  judged:  he  thatbeliev- 
eth  not  hath  been  judged  already,  because  he  hath  not  be- 
lieved on  the  name  of  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God.  And 
this  is  the  judgment,  that  light  is  come  into  the  world,  and 
men  loved  the  darkness  rather  than  the  light;  for  their  works 
were  evil. 

HERE  is  a  statement  of  God's  plan  in  sending  His  Son 
Jesus  the  Christ  into  the  world,  and  how  salvation 
is  to  be  obtained  through  Him.  A  man  must  believe  in 
Him;  if  he  do  not  believe  his  doom  is  sealed,  he  is  al- 
ready judged.  And  this  is  his  judgment:  Christ  Jesus 
gave  him  light  to  see  what  was  good  and  what  was  bad 
and  he  did  not  want  the  light,  he  did  not  want  to  see, 
he  preferred  the  darkness  because  what  he  did  was  evil. 
The  text  teaches  salvation  by  faith,  faith  in  Jesus  Christ. 
But  see  what  that  involves, — love  of  the  light,  for- 
saking of  darkness,  and  consequently  good  works. 
No  one  can  be  saved  without  good  works.  Faith  does 
not  mean  confession  of  the  name  of  Jesus,  in  the  sense 
merely  of  acknowledging  Him  to  be  divine,  the  only 
begotten  Son  of  God  who  was  crucified  to  save  you. 
Such  an  acknowledgment  is  not  even  an  absolute  essen- 
tial of  saving  faith,  for  Jesus  Himself  has  said  that  a  man 
might  blaspheme  Him,  deny  His  name,  that  is,  refuse 

86 


The  Judgment  87 

to  believe  Him  to  be  the  Christ,  the  Messiah,  the  Son 
of  God,  and  yet  be  saved.  Whosoever  denies  the  spirit 
of  the  doctrine  of  Christ  Jesus  (that  is  the  sin  against 
the  Spirit),  whosoever  prefers  darkness  rather  than 
light  because  his  works  are  evil,  he  it  is  who  "hath  not 
believed  on  the  name  of  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God." 
St.  Paul  condemns  the  doctrine  that  a  man  is  saved 
by  works,  and  declares  that  it  is  by  faith  that  men  are 
saved ;  and  St.  James  condemns  the  doctrine  of  salvation 
by  faith,  saying  that  the  devils  believe  and  tremble; 
they  have  faith  but  where  are  their  works?  "Show  me 
thy  faith  without  thy  works,  and  I  will  show  thee  my 
faith  by  my  works."  Both  are  coming  to  the  same  thing 
from  different  sides.  St.  Paul  saw  men,  both  his  own 
compatriots  and  Gentiles,  setting  their  hopes  on  a  sort 
of  thing  that  they  called  works, — sacrifices,  prayers, 
readings,  tithings,  temple-goings,  taking  part  in  the 
feasts,  washings,  fastings,  alms-givings.  It  was  this 
profane  and  criminal  humbugging  of  themselves  and 
others  which  he  denounces  under  the  name  of  works. 
St.  James,  on  the  other  hand,  is  speaking  to  men  who 
have  turned  faith  into  a  cant  phrase  to  cover  lawless- 
ness, who  would  say,  I  love  Jesus,  and  be  immoral,  or  dis- 
honest, or  unloving  to  their  fellow-men.  That  sort  of 
faith,  says  St.  James,  belongs  also  to  devils,  and  the 
man  who  has  faith  like  that  will  find  his  place  among 
the  devils.  Aye,  such  a  man  Christ  Jesus  cannot  save, 
for  he  is  judged  already,  he  has  chosen  darkness,  his 
works  are  evil.  Show  your  faith  by  your  works,  says 
St.  James.  Yes,  not  works  in  the  sense  in  which  St. 
Paul  was  speaking  of  works,  not  mere  forms,  but  deeds, 
works  in  that  sense.  Go,  do  something  for  others,  help 


88  Modern  Christianity 

those  that  are  in  need — perform  the  works  of  Christ 
Jesus  himself. 

That  is  the  sort  of  belief  which  St.  John  means,  and 
the  faith  which  St.  Paul  means, — to  so  believe  in  Christ 
Jesus  that  you  aim  to  be  like  Him.  That  it  is  to  believe 
in  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  man  who  does  not  believe  in  the 
name  of  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God  in  that  sense,  who 
is  not  appropriating  to  himself  that  life,  who  is  not  seek- 
ing to  follow  in  the  aims  and  details  of  his  life  the  exam- 
ple of  the  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  does  not  believe  in 
Christ  one  whit  more  than  the  devils  do;  and  the  sacri- 
fice of  the  Son  of  God  upon  the  cross  is  of  no  more  benefit 
to  him  than  it  is  to  the  devils.  He  "  hath  been  judged 
already."  Light  is  come  into  the  world,  and  he  has  loved 
the  darkness  rather  than  the  light,  for  his  works  are 
evil.  The  faith  of  which  St.  Paul  speaks,  and  the  belief 
of  which  St.  John  speaks,  are  life,  character.  Those 
are  the  important  things,  those  are  the  essentials;  not 
works  in  the  sense  of  forms,  but  faith  and  works  in  the 
sense  of  a  character  moulded  after  the  pattern  of  the 
character  of  God,  of  a  life  that  manifests  in  its  every 
deed  the  effort  to  live  unto  God,  to  live  a  life  of  truth 
and  love,  to  forget  ourselves  as  our  Lord  Christ  forgot 
himself,  living  and  dying  for  us. 

The  faith  that  is  needed  for  our  salvation  is  not  and 
cannot  be  a  stumbling  block  in  our  way,  it  is  a  help. 
There  is  absolutely  not  one  single  dogma  that  is,  accord- 
ing to  Christ's  teaching,  essential  to  salvation,  not  even 
a  belief,  in  the  dogmatic  sense,  in  His  own  person  and 
mission.  "God  sent  not  his  son  into  the  world  to  judge 
the  world."  He  sent  Him  to  help  us,  to  save  us.  No 
dogma  can  save,  no  heresy  of  doctrine  in  itself  con- 


The  Judgment  89 

demns;  no  forms  can  save,  and  even  the  lack  of  all 
connection  with  the  visible  Church,  its  forms  and 
sacraments,  does  not  of  necessity  judge  a  man.  The 
Son  of  God  did  not  come  to  judge  the  world.  The  judg- 
ment of  any  man  lies  in  the  fact  that  his  works  are  evil, 
that  he  prefers  darkness  rather  than  light. 

Do  not  misunderstand.  Doctrines  are  not  useless 
things,  neither  are  forms.  Right  doctrines  and  right 
forms  are  of  inestimable  value,  and,  as  our  Catechism 
has  it,  speaking  of  the  sacraments  of  Baptism  and  the 
Supper  of  the  Lord,  they  are,  in  the  ordinary  conditions 
of  life,  "necessary  to  salvation/'  But  in  the  ultimate 
sense,  in  considering  the  fundamental  principles  of 
things,  they  are  not  essentials,  because  they  are  the 
means  to  an  end,  and  that  end  is  life,  character. 

Why  do  we  go  to  church  ?  Because  there  is  any  merit 
in  it  ?  As  an  act  of  merit  there  is  just  as  much  value  in 
our  going  to  a  heathen  temple.  We  are  here  not  as  an 
act  of  merit,  but  to  seek  an  inward,  spiritual  communion 
with  God,  to  help  us  to  bring  our  characters  into 
conformity  with  His  law,  that  is  with  Himself,  for 
His  law  is  the  expression  of  Himself.  For  this  end, 
also,  Christ  Jesus  came,  the  Son  of  God,  made  man,  to 
help  us  to  become  one  with  God.  Belief  in  Him  is  of  no 
use  if  it  means  only  that  you  hold  the  correct  doctrine 
of  His  Incarnation,  the  Eucharist,  etc.  Flatly,  if  that  is 
all  the  belief  a  man  has,  if  his  belief  do  not  involve  one- 
ness with  God,  in  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  he  might  exactly 
as  well  believe  in  the  incarnation  of  a  Buddha;  the  one 
would  help  him  as  much  or  as  little  as  the  other.  Sav- 
ing faith  is  not  belief  in  a  fact,  not  belief  in  the  facts  of 
the  life  and  death  of  our  Lord,  but  such  a  real  belief  in 


go  Modern  Christianity 

• 

His  character  that  we  come  into  union  with  His  life, 
and  such  union  with  Christ  is  union  with  God  the  Father 
and  eternal  life. 

And  now,  further,  who  or  what  is  this  God  the  Father 
with  whom  we  must  come  into  communion,  into  oneness, 
if  we  would  live  for  ever  ?  He  is  not  something  external 
to  you,  a  giant  of  power  and  wisdom  whom  you  cannot 
apprehend,  and  who  cannot  comprehend  you.  You  are 
divine.  God  is  within  you  as  much  as  without  you.  In 
Him  ye  live  and  move  and  have  your  being.  1 1  is  in  that 
divinity  that  the  possibility  of  our  eternal  life  lies;  it  is 
the  development  of  our  divine  nature,  its  growth  through 
the  infinite  ages,  as  we  develop  more  and  more  in  the 
image  of  God,  as  we  grow  and  grow  for  ever  into  the 
stature  of  the  perfect  man,  the  eternal  sons  of  God. 
It  is  a  constant  growth  of  happiness, — a  growth  of  love, 
of  truth,  of  all  the  possibilities  of  the  glorious  divine 
nature  within  us,  the  feeble  consciousness  of  which  even 
now  gives  us  a  sense  of  power,  of  grandeur,  of  happiness, 
of  satisfaction,  which  nothing  else  can  give.  It  is  a  de- 
velopment of  our  true  selves,  our  own  unhampered, 
undisguised  individualities,  for  the  higher  a  man  rises, 
the  more  the  noble  qualities,  that  is,  the  divine  existence 
within  him,  are  developed,  the  more  marked,  the  more 
emphatic  his  individuality  becomes.  And  so  the  higher 
we  rise  toward  the  great  centre  of  all  divinity,  the  more 
closely  we  approach  the  perfection  of  our  divine  natures, 
the  eternal  sonship  of  God,  the  more  rounded  and  com- 
plete our  being,  our  individuality  becomes. 

But  this  salvation,  this  eternal  felicity  of  divine  de- 
velopment, belongs  only  to  the  man  who  gives  play  to 
his  soul,  that  is,  who  seeks  to  develop  the  divine,  the 


The  Judgment  91 

good  and  the  noble  that  is  within  him,  who  believes 
with  his  life  on  the  name  of  the  only  begotten  Son  of 
God.  The  cross  of  Christ  cannot  save  wolves,  nor  swine, 
nor  vultures,  nor  foxes.  The  man  who  makes  himself 
a  beast,  who  surrenders  himself  to  the  beastly  nature 
that  is  within  him,  who  chooses  the  ignoble,  the  sensual, 
the  selfish,  the  dishonourable,  instead  of  the  noble,  the 
spiritual,  the  unselfish,  the  honourable,  the  true, — that 
is  the  man  who  does  not  believe  on  the  name  of  the  only 
begotten  Son  of  God,  however  loud  his  protestations  to 
the  contrary;  that  is  the  man  who  is  becoming  a  beast, 
who  is  forfeiting  his  divine  nature,  and  with  it  every  pos- 
sibility of  the  eternal  and  glorious  development  of  the 
sons  of  God.  What  possibilities  of  heaven  could  exist 
for  such  men,  any  more  than  for  a  pack  of  ravening 
wolves  or  a  herd  of  wallowing  swine?  The  possibilities 
of  heaven  lie  in  the  character  of  a  man,  and  so  it  is  that 
God  sent  His  Son  not  to  judge  the  world,  but  to  save  the 
world  by  a  life  and  death,  belief  in  which  might  help  to 
mould  our  characters.  If  a  man  make  choice  of  Jesus 
Christ  as  his  master  and  his  pattern,  believing  in  Him 
as  his  Saviour  from  the  evil,  casting  himself  upon  His 
sacrifice,  and  not  upon  his  own  wisdom  to  save  him  from 
wrong-doing,  then  he  has  found  a  help,  a  succour,  which 
priests  and  prophets  longed  for  and  could  not  find. 

All  men,  whether  they  will  or  no,  are  preparing  for 
the  future  life  as  surely  as  the  boy  is  preparing  to  be  a 
man.  Every  man,  the  whole  world  over,  is  developing 
the  worldly,  devilish,  beastly  side  of  his  nature,  or  the 
true,  loving,  and  divine  side  ot  it.  Jesus  has  shown  us 
what  is  divine,  what  we  should  aim  at,  what  we  can  be ; 
and  to  believe  in  Him  is  to  accept  that  object-lesson  to 


92  Modern  Christianity 

show  us  what  to  do.  Belief  in  Him  means  the  accept- 
ance  of  that  life  as  our  pattern,  so  that  we  judge  right 
and  wrong,  good  and  bad,  by  no  other  standard  than 
the  perfect  standard  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  In  all 
that  we  say  we  ask  ourselves  whether  our  Lord  Jesus 
would  so  have  spoken.  Would  He  have  uttered  a  doubt- 
ful jest,  would  He  have  spoken  an  insinuatingly  fault- 
finding word,  or  told  a  disparaging  little  story  about  a 
friend  behind  his  back,  would  He  have  spoken  in  irrita- 
tion a  word  intended  to  hurt  the  feelings  of  another, 
or  would  He  have  allowed  a  word  of  abuse  to  pass  His 
lips?  In  all  that  we  do  we  ask  if  our  Lord  Christ 
would  so  have  done.  Would  He  have  earned  money  in 
any  way  which  would  not  bear  the  most  searching  light 
of  publicity,  or  in  any  way  which,  while  technically 
correct,  as  the  laws  of  human  justice  judge  correctness, 
injures  any  other,  never  mind  how  remote  from  us; 
would  He  have  indulged  His  senses  in  any  immoderation, 
in  anything  which  could  injure  His  body,  His  character, 
His  usefulness,  or  those  of  another?  To  believe  on  the 
name  of  the  Son  of  God  is  to  seek  thus  to  turn  the  light  on 
all  the  dark  places  of  our  nature;  to  so  believe  that  we 
aim  to  make  our  lives  as  good  as  His;  to  do  in  each  cir- 
cumstance just  exactly  what  we  honestly  believe  that 
He  would  have  done;  and  so  to  believe  means  to  obtain 
an  inestimable,  incomparable  aid  in  the  hard  struggle 
against  the  beastly  and  devilish  part  of  our  nature, 
which,  I  take  it,  every  man,  at  least  in  the  moments 
when  he  stops  and  thinks  of  himself,  would  like  to  con- 
quer if  he  had  the  strength. 

We  believe  that  Jesus  was  the  only  begotten  Son  of 
God,  because  He  was  a  perfect  manifestation  of  the  at- 


The  Judgment  93 

tributes  of  divinity,  which  are  summed  up  in  truth  and 
love.  We  know  God  through  the  Son,  for  no  man  hath 
ascended  up  into  heaven  save  this  man,  who  verily 
came  down  from  heaven ;  if  then  we  know  God  through 
Him,  we  know  God  through  man,  for  in  the  man  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  was  God  revealed.  And  as  we  know  God 
through  man,  so  only  through  man  may  we  reach  God. 
In  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God  is  all  mankind  united, 
summed  up,  as  it  were.  In  Jesus  of  Nazareth  were 
summed  up  in  their  perfection  all  those  divine  elements 
which  we  find  scattered  through  the  race  of  man.  In 
Him  was  revealed  the  perfect  Son  of  God,  the  only  be- 
gotten Son  of  God.  And  if  that  be  so  and  we  believe  in 
Him,  and  hence  love  and  seek  to  imitate  the  divine  per- 
fections of  His  nature,  then  too  we  must  admire  and 
seek  to  imitate  the  divine  elements — the  good,  and  the 
noble,  and  the  true — which  we  find  in  other  children  of 
God.  Something  is  wrong  with  us,  our  belief  is  not  full 
and  true  and  real,  if  we  find  ourselves  admiring  worldly 
people,  selfish  people,  ungodly  people,  and  choosing 
them  for  our  associates,  instead  of  unworldly,  unselfish, 
true,  pure  people.  What  do  we  admire  in  them  ?  why 
do  we  choose  them  ?  Because  we  have  an  unconfessed 
love  of  the  things  of  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil, 
which  we  profess  to  have  renounced.  If  I  really  believe 
in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  knowing  Him  to  be  the  only  be- 
gotten Son  of  God,  accepting  His  life  for  my  life,  as 
such  belief  involves,  then  I  must  know  and  love  the 
sons  of  God  in  whom  God  is  now  manifest  among  men. 
My  belief,  if  it  is  a  true  belief,  is  not  a  belief  merely 
in  the  one  perfect  manifestation  of  God  in  man ;  it  is  a 
belief  in  the  divine  which  He  manifested,  it  is  a  belief 


94  Modern  Christianity 

in  love  and  truth  wherever  I  find  it,  a  love  for,  and  kin- 
ship, and  communion  with  all  good  men,  who  manifest 
in  their  lives  love  and  truth.  The  democracy  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven, — and  remember  that  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  as  Jesus  used  the  expression,  meant  some- 
thing in  this  earth,  and  not  merely  something  in  the 
world  to  come,  and  that  no  man  enters  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  in  the  future  life  except  as  he  enters  it  here,— 
the  democracy  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  the  most 
levelling  democracy  that  men  have  ever  imagined.  In 
that  kingdom  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  distinction  of  rank, 
wealth,  birth,  or  race;  all  these  material  and  worldly 
distinctions  are  cast  aside.  Full  belief  in  the  Son  of  God 
means  full  brotherhood  with  all  the  sons  of  God.  It 
means  that  we  love  them, — not  merely  that  we  profess 
love  in  a  general  way,  and  are  in  a  general  way  inter- 
ested in  their  welfare,  but  that  we  fulfil  toward  each  in- 
dividual the  royal  law,  which  is  the  law  of  the  children 
of  the  kingdom— that  we  do  to  each  person,  whatever 
his  position,  his  social  condition,  his  country,  or  his  race, 
precisely  what  we  would  have  done  to  ourselves;  that 
we  think  ourselves  into  each  other  person's  place.  We 
cannot  love  God  whom  we  have  not  seen,  except  through 
our  brother  men  whom  we  have  seen.  The  only  test  of 
our  love  of  God,  and  of  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God 
who  manifested  God  to  man,  is  our  love  for  our  fellow- 
men.  To  study  our  society,  and  then  to  study  the  so- 
ciety in  which  Jesus  of  Nazareth  moved,  the  tests  of 
fellowship  and  social  intercourse  which  He  set  up,  must 
serve  to  show  us  how  very  dimly  we  have  yet  learned 
to  apprehend  the  Christianity  of  our  Master,  how  un- 
believing is  our  professed  belief. 


BIG  THIEF  AND  LITTLE  THIEF 

ST.  MATTHEW  vii.,  21:  Not  every  one  that  saith  unto  me, 
Lord,  Lord,  shall  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven;  but  he 
that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father  which  is  in  heaven. 

A  MAN  cannot  live  a  life  which  he  knows  to  be  wrong, 
and  make  his  peace  with  God  by  penance,  or  pray- 
ers, or  gifts.  A  man  cannot  make  money  in  ways  which 
are  wrong,  dishonest,  injurious  to  others,  and  then  make 
his  peace  with  God  by  giving  great  gifts  to  the  Church. 
He  may  succeed  in  making  his  peace  with  the  authori- 
ties of  the  Church,  he  may  be  received  into  honour  by 
them,  and  be  praised  and  treated  as  one  of  God's  saints, 
— but  he  has  not  made  his  peace  with  God.  At  the  last 
day,  when  he  shall  stand  before  the  Judge  and  say: 
"  Lord,  Lord,  did  I  not  prophesy  in  Thy  name  by  build- 
ing churches  and  seminaries  ?  Did  I  not  cast  out  the 
devils  of  vice  and  misery  in  Thy  name  by  endowing 
asylums,  and  hospitals,  and  missions  ?  In  Thy  name,  O 
Lord,  I  have  done  great  works,  erecting  universities, 
and  libraries,  and  monuments,  so  that  all  men  have 
heard  of  my  goodness  for  Thy  name's  sake  ";  then,  we 
are  told,  the  Lord  will  say:  "  I  never  knew  you:  depart 
from  me  ye  that  work  iniquity."  That  is,  He  will  say 
to  them:  You  have  not  been  working  for  me,  you 
have  been  working  for  the  devil. 
The  man  who  makes  his  money  in  an  improper  way, 
95 


96  Modern  Christianity 

and  then  seeks  to  win  himself  a  place  in  the  kingdom 
of  God  by  building  churches,  and  endowing  universities, 
seminaries,  missions,  and  other  charities,  may  succeed 
in  getting  the  very  best  pew  in  the  richest  and  most 
pious  church;  he  may  become  the  sworn  friend  of  godly 
pastors;  he  may  figure  as  the  director  of  a  dozen  chari- 
table institutions;  he  may  sit  on  many  platforms  and 
very  loudly  denounce  vice  at  public  meetings;  but  never 
in  any  such  way  can  he  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 
God  does  not  condone  fraud,  and  the  frauds  which  the 
imperfect  laws  of  man  cannot  touch  are  tried  in  the 
court  of  God  Almighty  exactly  as  though  they  were 
midnight  burglary  or  highway  robbery.  The  man 
who  has  amassed  his  millions  by  railroad-wrecking  and 
stock-watering,  by  controlling  councils  and  legislatures, 
by  ingenious  deals  through  which  the  money  in  equity 
belonging  to  others  has,  by  no  process  punishable  by 
human  law,  passed  into  his  possession,  is  tried  and  con- 
victed in  the  court  of  God  on  the  vulgar  charge  of  theft. 
There  is  no  use  there  in  giving  enormous  retainers  for 
the  very  best  counsel  to  defend  him  on  his  trial.  The 
most  pious  priests  and  eloquent  preachers  cannot  save 
him  from  the  clutches  of  the  law  of  God,  nor  even  win 
delay.  Neither  can  he  bribe  the  jurors;  and  the  sheriff 
that  receives  him  will  not  allow  him  to  escape  on  any 
pretext,  nor  for  any  sum.  He  must  serve  his  term 
with  safe-burglars,  pickpockets,  footpads,  train-rob- 
bers, sneak-thieves,  confidence  men,  and  the  like.  With 
them  is  his  portion  in  the  hereafter.  God  knows  no 
difference  between  them.  He  classes  them  all  together, 
—enemies  of  society,  enemies  of  the  state,  enemies  of 
righteousness,  enemies  of  God.  He  has  the  same  con- 


Big  Thief  and  Little  Thief          97 

demnation  for  the  man  who  robs  you  of  your  purse 
and  the  man  who  contrives  to  relieve  the  public  of 
$50,000,000;  they  are  in  His  sight  equally  loathsome, 
equally  vulgar,  equally  criminal.  No  character  that 
priests  or  pastors  can  give  the  big  thief  is  going  to  make 
him  any  less  hideous  in  God's  sight  than  the  common 
burglar;  no  retainer  which  he  may  give  them  to  plead 
his  plea,  in  the  shape  of  churches  and  charities,  is  going 
to  help  him  get  free  from  the  awful  condemnation  of 
God,  his  Judge.  Every  one  who  reads  our  Lord's  words 
must  see  that  He  was  speaking  of  just  such  pious 
scamps  when  He  said,  "Not  every  one  that  saith  unto 
me  Lord,  Lord,  shall  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven ; 
but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father  which  is  in 
heaven."  Those  churches,  hospitals,  asylums,  univer- 
sities, libraries,  missions,  and  the  like,  are  their  cry  of 
"  Lord,  Lord  " ;  and  when  they  utter  that  cry  in  that  par- 
ticular manner  there  are  plenty  of  pious  men  who  will 
tumble  over  one  another  in  the  attempt  to  take  them  by 
the  hand,  and  smile  lovingly  upon  them,  and  raise  their 
eyes  heavenward,  and  say:  "Oh,  my  dear  sir,  you  are 
doing  a  noble  work  for  the  Lord;  the  Lord  has  indeed 
blessed  the  whole  community  in  giving  you  this  blessing 
of  wealth;  you  are  preaching  the  Lord's  name  like  a 
prophet,  you  are  casting  out  legions  of  devils  and  work- 
ing very  miracles  by  your  benevolence."  By-and-bye 
this  man  comes  to  the  gates  of  heaven ;  he  is  very  sure  of 
admittance;  he  says:  "Here  are  my  testimonials  from 
the  Lord's  representatives.  They  show  how  I  have 
prophesied,  cast  out  devils,  and  worked  miracles/' 
But  the  Lord  says  to  him,  "I  never  knew  you:  depart 
from  me,  ye  workers  of  iniquity." 


98  Modern  Christianity 

It  is  astonishing  how  men  will  blind  themselves  to 
the  very  nature  of  God,  and  to  the  character  of  His 
dealings  with  men.  And  it  has  been  the  same  through 
all  the  ages  of  the  world's  history.  Here  is  a  poor  savage 
who  is  going  on  a  marauding  expedition  to  capture 
cattle  or  slaves;  and  he  prays  first  to  his  god,  and  offers 
sacrifices,  and  receives  the  blessing  of  the  priest  on  his 
enterprise.  Here  is  the  Mexican  border  smuggler  who 
goes  and  confesses  to  the  priest,  gets  his  absolution  on 
condition  of  a  penance  and  a  gift  to  the  Church,  and 
goes  out  light-hearted  to  engage  in  more  smuggling, 
with  the  same  results.  Here  is  a  stock-rigger,  a  railroad- 
wrecker,  who  founds  with  a  part  of  the  proceeds  of  his 
operations  a  seminary  to  teach  men  how  to  preach  the 
Gospel,  or  builds  a  church  to  preach  it  in,  and  gains 
therefrom  new  strength  and  courage  to  carry  on  his 
nefarious  projects.  These  three  men  are  on  a  par,  so 
far  as  their  attempted  dealings  with  God  are  concerned. 
They  have  not  the  least  idea  what  God  is.  They  are, 
whatever  they  may  call  themselves,  all  alike  devil- 
worshippers,  to  whom  apply  our  Lord's  awful  words  of 
condemnation:  "  I  never  knew  you:  depart  from  me,  ye 
workers  of  iniquity." 

"  Not  every  one  that  saith  unto  me,  Lord,  Lord, . . .  but 
he  that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father  which  is  in  heaven." 
People  will  keep  thinking  of  God  as  some  being  outside 
of  us  who  can  be  propitiated  and  made  to  give  us  a 
reward  by  means  of  something  which  we  do  or  say. 
That  is  heathenism,  unbelief,  devil-worship,  whether  it 
calls  itself  Buddhism,  Mohammedanism,  or  Christianity, 
or  whatsoever  else.  God  is  love;  God  is  truth;  the  law 
of  virtue  and  integrity  and  loving-kindness  is  His  will, 


Big  Thief  and  Little  Thief         99 

and  unless  a  man  set  his  heart  to  do  that  will  he  cannot 
know  God  and  the  eternal  life  which  is  in  the  knowledge 
of  God.  Neither  is  the  law  of  God  in  any  way  an  arbi- 
trary or  an  accidental  thing,  so  that  some  other  condi- 
tion of  our  eternal  happiness  could  or  can  be  given  to 
man  than  the  acceptance,  for  the  aim  and  rule  of  our 
lives,  of  this  divine  law.  It  is  essential,  because  it  is  the 
fundamental  law  of  the  being  of  God,  and  of  all  that 
is  divine;  and  our  eternal  happiness  lies  in  our  becoming 
like  God,  being  united  with  Him,  and  pervaded  by  His 
Spirit.  That,  and  that  only,  is  heaven  and  eternal  life. 

But  a  man  may  say:  "Is  it  not  a  noble  and  a  glori- 
ous use  of  wealth  to  endow  missions,  build  hospitals, 
churches,  colleges,  and  asylums  ?  Supposing  a  man  to 
have  gotten  his  wealth  in  a  doubtful  or  wrong  manner, 
what  better  amends  can  he  make  than  to  use  it  in  such 
a  way?  and  can  he  not  even  do  more  good  by  this  means 
than  he  has  done  harm  in  acquiring  it?  and  do  you 
not  believe  that  a  man  who  does  such  a  good  work  as 
that  will  be  accepted  of  God  and  forgiven  ?" 

Supposing  that  a  man  had  picked  another  man's 
pocket  of  five  dollars.  If  he  came  to  you  and  gave  you 
five  cents  of  that  towards  building  churches,  and  ten 
cents  towards  sending  out  missionaries,  and  five  cents 
towards  educating  men  for  the  ministry,  and  ten  cents 
towards  erecting  a  hospital,  would  you  shake  him  by 
the  hand  and  assure  him  that  he  was  doing  more  good 
than  he  had  ever  done  harm,  and  that  he  was  a  noble 
Christian  who  would  surely  be  accepted  of  God  ? 
You  certainly  would  say  that  the  very  first  condition 
of  repentance  must  be  restitution,  that  he  must  be 
throughly  sorry  for  what  he  had  done,  and  must  turn 


ioo  Modern  Christianity 

about,  lead  a  new  life,  and  give  up  that  life  of  robbing 
altogether. 

The  conditions  are  the  same,  whether  a  man  has 
taken  much  or  little,  and  whether  he  has  taken  it  in  a 
way  punishable  by  human  law,  or  in  an  ungodly  man- 
ner which  yet  is  not  punishable  by  human  law.  The 
first  condition  of  repentance  is  restitution,  and  no  man 
can  draw  near  to  God  until  he  repent  him  of  his  sin. 


THE  REAL  HELU 

i  JOHN  iv.,  20-21 :  If  a  man  say,  I  love  God,  and  hateth  his 
brother,  he  is  a  liar :  for  he  that  loveth  not  his  brother  whom 
he  hath  seen,  how  can  he  love  God  whom  he  hath  not  seen  ? 
And  this  commandment  have  we  from  him,  That  he  who 
loveth  God  love  his  brother  also. 

THE  foundation  principle  of  Christianity  is  love. 
But  this  love  is  a  very  practical  thing.  It  is  by  no 
means  a  comfortable  sense  that  all  is  well,  the  sense  of 
satisfaction  with  oneself  because  one  is  well  fed  and  well 
clothed  and  well  housed  and  successful  in  what  one 
undertakes,  and  in  pleasant  relations  with  those  of  one's 
household  and  the  immediate  friends  with  whom  one 
associates.  Love  is  a  deeper  and  much  more  exacting 

1  This  sermon  was  preached  on  Trinity  Sunday,  1906,  imme- 
diately after  the  publication  of  the  government  report  on 
the  packing  industry.  Hence  the  illustration  is  drawn  from 
the  conditions  then  prevailing  in  that  industry.  That  in 
principle  those  conditions  were  not  altogether  exceptional  is 
shown  by  the  more  recent  exposures  by  trained  investigators 
of  the  condition  of  the  labourers  in  the  steel  mills  in  and  about 
Pittsburg — twelve  hours  labour,  seven  days  in  the  week,  for  an 
inadequate  living  wage — and  the  outbreak  at  McKee's  Rocks 
caused  by  such  conditions;  or  by  the  government  exposure 
of  the  very  contemptible  thievery  practised  by  the  so-called 
Sugar  Trust.  In  another  direction  conditions  in  the  baking 
industry,  as  shown  by  investigations  made  in  New  York  City 

101 


io2  .Modern  Christianity 

thing  than  this.  Love  is  something  that  stirs  one's 
being,  not  with  contentment  and  satisfaction,  but  with 
yearning  and  desire.  But  love  is  not  merely  a  yearning 
after  God,  which  makes  men  turn  aside  from  and  aban- 
don the  ordinary  relations  of  life,  their  family,  their 
friends,  their  fellow-men,  and  seek  solitary  communion 
with  God,  an  enrapt  contemplation  of  Him.  There  is  a 
very  big  element  of  selfishness  and  self-seeking  in  such 
love  as  that.  Love  expresses  itself  first  of  all  in  its  rela- 
tion toward  those  about  us,  the  members  of  our  family, 
the  persons  whom  we  employ  or  who  employ  us,  our 
fellow-employees,  those  of  whom  we  buy  or  to  whom  we 
sell,  the  people  whom  we  meet  in  our  ordinary  social 
intercourse,  in  whose  houses  we  visit,  with  whom  we 
sit  down  to  meals,  with  whom  we  make  merry  and  dance 
and  have  a  good  time.  Love  shows  itself  in  considera- 
tion for  these  people,  for  their  feelings,  for  their  rights; 
in  treating  them  as  we  would  be  treated  by  them;  it 
shows  itself  when  in  our  dealings  with  them  we  seek 
not  our  own,  not  how  we  may  be  profited  by  them,  but 

at  various  times  within  recent  years,  occasioned  by  strikes  of 
employees,  furnish  another  example  of  the  same  general  truths 
here  illustrated  by  the  conditions  in  the  packing  industries 
in  1906.  Many  other  cases  might  be  cited  in  other  trades  and 
industries.  The  packers  are  merely  an  instance.  While  the 
investigation  of  the  packing  industry  and  the  iniquities  there 
disclosed  are  now  over  three  years  old,  and  therefore — so 
rapidly  do  we  forget  yesterday  and  pass  on  to  the  morrow — a 
thing  of  the  past,  it  has  seemed  best  to  retain  this  sermon  in 
practically  its  original  form,  rather  than  to  seek  to  substitute 
illustrations  or  applications  drawn  from  more  recent  expos- 
ures in  other  industries,  to  some  of  which,  however,  attention 
has  been  briefly  called  in  foot-notes. 


The  Real  Hell  103 

how  we  may  profit  them.  Is  there  any  other  possible 
way  of  loving  a  person  except  to  regard  him  in  such  a 
manner  and  treat  him  in  such  a  manner  ? 

Nor  is  the  love  spoken  of  by  St.  John  love  toward  one 
person  only,  great  and  valuable  as  that  may  be,  but  lov- 
ing-kindness, that  yearning  spirit  of  love  which  takes 
possession  of  our  nature  and  compels  from  us  loving 
dealing  with  all  with  whom  we  come  in  contact.  To  pos- 
sess that  spirit  of  love  is  to  be  united  with  God,  to  know 
God ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  he  who  does  not  have  that 
spirit  of  love  cannot  know  God.  The  test  of  our  know- 
ledge of  God  and  our  love  for  Him  lies  in  our  relations 
toward  those  about  us.  We  use  certain  expressions  of 
faith ;  we  have  our  creeds  and  doctrines.  To-day  we  cel- 
ebrate the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  But  true  faith  does 
not  consist  in  the  recitation  of  or  belief  in  the  articles 
of  the  Creed ;  it  does  not  consist  in  a  true  understanding 
and  holding  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  Those  are 
the  externals.  True  faith  is  expressed  in  the  life  of  love. 
Therefore  the  true  test  of  the  Christian  Church,  as  of 
the  individual  Christian,  is  the  expression  of  love  in 
our  relations  to  our  fellow-men. 

You  have  all  been,  I  doubt  not,  profoundly  startled 
within  the  last  few  days  by  the  report  made  by  the 
government  inspectors  on  the  beef-packing  industry 
in  the  city  of  Chicago.  Those  of  you  who  read  the  report 
in  full  found  it,  I  doubt  not,  revolting  and  offensive  to 
the  last  degree.  I  am  not  going  to  dwell  on  the  details 
of  that  report  or  its  revolting  aspects;  I  wish  you  to 
consider  certain  conditions  there  revealed  from  the 
stand-point  of  the  Christian  religion.  The  things  told  in 
that  report  happened  and  are  happening  in  the  country 


104  Modern  Christianity 

which,  I  suppose,  you  and  I  would  claim  to  be  the  most 
advanced  and  the  most  Christian  country  in  the  world. 
They  happened  and  are  happening  in  one  of  the  largest 
cities  in  that  country,  singularly  progressive  in  many 
particulars,  with  a  great  university,  a  magnificent  pub- 
lic school  system,  great  numbers  of  churches;  in  a 
city  which  has  all  the  marks  of  that  Christian  civilisa- 
tion of  which  we  boast.  The  heads  of  these  great  pack- 
ing establishments  are,  I  believe,  all  of  them,  at  least 
nominally  Christians,  any  one  of  whom  would  feel  ag- 
grieved if  it  were  said  of  him,  "That  man  is  a  disbeliever 
in  the  fundamental  ethics  of  Christianity/1  These  men 
have  made  enormous  wealth  out  of  the  industry  in  which 
they  are  concerned.  Some  of  them  have  given  money 
for  educational,  benevolent,  and  religious  purposes. 
They  are  all,  I  believe,  received  in  the  Christian  society 
of  the  city  to  which  they  belong  and  in  other  cities  in 
which  they  at  times  reside.  They  are  not,  at  all  events, 
outcasts  from  society.  They  are  or  have  been  courted 
and  respected  by  the  Christian  men  and  women  of  the 
land,  by  ministers  of  the  Gospel,  by  presidents  and  di- 
rectors of  benevolent  and  educational  institutions. 

Now  what  are  the  conditions  of  the  industries  which 
these  men  direct  and  own  and  of  the  employees  whom 
they  employ?  One  condition  revealed  is  this:  these 
men  seem  to  have  regarded  their  employees  as  so  many 
cattle;  or  perhaps  it  is  safer  to  say  that  they  did  not 
even  regard  them  as  cattle,  but  as  so  many  pieces  of 
machinery,  so  much  wood  and  stone  and  metal  out  of 
which  they  were  to  derive  as  much  profit  as  they  could. 
It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  unhealthy  and  uncleanly 
conditions  of  places  in  which  men  and  women  work 


The  Real  Hell  105 

produce  disease,  both  physical  and  moral.  Lung  dis- 
eases are  perhaps  the  most  fatal  of  all  diseases  among 
adult  workers.  Consumption  and  pneumonia  are  to-day 
a  veritable  scourge  to  the  land.  We  know  that  these  are 
entirely  preventable  diseases,  diseases  due  to  infection, 
the  result  of  bad  sanitary  conditions  in  the  home  and 
workshop.  Any  of  you  who  have  seen  the  ravages  of 
consumption  in  the  families  of  workers,  or  perhaps  in 
your  own  family,  know  the  horror  of  it  all :  the  long 
battle  for  life  (with  the  pathetic  hopefulness  of  the  man 
or  woman  who  is  daily  and  hourly  growing  weaker) ; 
the  increasing  inability  to  earn,  the  increasing  expenses 
which  the  decreased  earnings  cannot  meet,  the  added 
burden  on  the  other  members  of  the  family;  the  infec- 
tion that  spreads  to  another  and  another;  if  it  be  the 
wage-earner  whose  life  is  ebbing  away,  the  pinch  of 
need  that  comes  upon  the  whole  house ;  then  perhaps  a 
mother  with  little  children  left  to  struggle  on  unaided ; 
and  those  little  children  growing  up  with  weakened  con- 
stitutions as  the  result  of  the  diseased  condition  of  the 
home  in  which  they  were  born  or  of  their  first  few  years 
of  improper  nourishment,  due  to  the  pinched  condition 
of  the  home.  Whatever  the  details,  there  is  always 
a  long-drawn-out  trail  of  misery  spreading  in  every 
direction.  Whoever  has  seen  and  felt  it  cannot  but 
realise  the  horrible  cruelty  of  men  who,  for  the  sake  of 
getting  a  larger  income  out  of  their  business,  will  com- 
pel or  allow  other  men  and  women  to  work  under  con- 
ditions which  propagate  and  foster  such  disease. 

Now  it  is  precisely  these  conditions  which,  according 
to  the  testimony  of  the  inspectors,  exist  in  those  packing 
houses  in  Chicago.  There  is  no  question  but  that  the 


io6  Modern  Christianity 

business  has  been  enormously  profitable.  The  owners 
have  made  vast  fortunes  out  of  it.  It  is  not,  therefore, 
lack  of  means,  such  as  you  sometimes  find  in  some 
skimped  and  profitless  business,  which  has  prevented 
these  men  from  giving  their  employees  working  condi- 
tions which  would  not  endanger  their  physical  well- 
being. 

Viewed  from  this  aspect  only,  the  whole  thing  is  an 
example  of  utterly  heartless  greed.  What  love  of  their 
brothers  who  work  for  them  is  shown  in  such  dealings  ? 
And  if  "a  man  love  not  his  brother,  whom  he  hath  seen, 
how  can  he  love  God,  whom  he  hath  not  seen  ? ' '  Surely 
if  such  men  say  "  I  love  God/'  they  have  made  them- 
selves liars,  for  they  hate  their  brothers;  or  at  least 
that  is  the  effect  of  such  an  attitude  toward  them. 

But  not  only  does  the  treatment  accorded  by  these 
men  to  their  employees  endanger  their  physical  health, 
it  endangers  their  soul  health  also.  Some  of  you  know 
the  horror  of  the  curse  of  drink.  Because  of  the  awful 
results  of  drink,  Christian  men  and  women  in  the 
churches  have  above  everything  else  directed  their 
efforts  against  this  evil.  The  pulpits  of  our  churches 
ring  with  denunciations  of  the  liquor-dealers.  Every 
clergyman  and  the  great  bulk  of  the  men  and  women 
who  occupy  the  pews  are  ready  to  welcome  any  denun- 
ciation of  saloons  and  to  support  any  organisation  which 
attacks  the  liquor  bars.  The  evil  of  drink  will  never  be 
remedied  until  the  things  that  lie  behind  it  have  been 
remedied.  If  you  make  men  and  women  work  in  un- 
sanitary and  beastly  conditions,  you  compel  them  to 
seek  a  stimulus  which  will  at  least  seem  to  neutralise 
the  effects  of  that  atmosphere  and  those  surroundings 


The  Real  Hell  107 

upon  them,  and  the  stimulus  which  they  can  best  and 
most  cheaply  obtain  and  which  works  most  speedily  is 
drink.  If  you  make  men  and  women  work  in  such  sur- 
roundings, you  so  degrade  their  appetites  and  desires 
as  to  leave  nothing  but  the  lowest  physical  passions 
and  appetites  still  active.  You  make  them  beasts  and 
they  will  live  like  beasts.  It  is  precisely  this  sort  of 
thing  which  these  men  have  been  doing,  according  to 
the  statements  of  this  report,  with  their  employees.1 

Again  the  very  centre  of  home  life  is  the  woman.  If 
you  would  have  a  home  you  must  conserve  the  purity 
of  the  woman,  and  if  you  would  conserve  her  purity  you 
must  preserve  her  modesty.  No  one  who  has  any  es- 
teem for  woman,  who  loves  his  mother  or  his  wife  or 
his  daughter  or  his  sister,  can  read  the  description  con- 
tained in  that  report  of  the  conditions  under  which 
the  women  employed  in  these  works  have  lived,  com- 
pelled thereto  by  the  necessity  of  earning  their  daily 
bread,  without  feeling  his  blood  boil  at  the  revolting 
inhumanity,  the  degrading  and  cynical  immorality  of 
the  men  responsible  for  it,  who  have  made  out  of  the 
degradation  of  the  men  and  women  in  their  employ  mil- 
lions of  dollars. 

But  not  only  have  the  packers,  according  to  the  report 
presented,  treated  those  employed  by  them  in  this 
heartless  and  cruel  manner :  they  have  sold  to  the  public 
products  prepared  in  a  revolting  manner,  and,  according 
to  the  best  testimony  available,  in  some  cases  certainly 

»  Recent  investigations  in  Pittsburg  show  that  the  un- 
natural and  brutalising  conditions  existing  in  the  steel  indus- 
try there  have  similarly  generated  and  fostered  drunkenness 
and  immorality. 


io8  Modern  Christianity 

dangerous  to  health.  There  has  been  on  their  part  the 
same  utter  disregard  of  any  moral  element  in  their  rela- 
tion to  the  people  to  whom  they  sold  as  there  has  been 
in  their  relation  to  the  men  they  employed.  Provided 
they  could  obtain  a  profit,  it  appears  to  have  been  a 
matter  of  indifference  to  them  what  befell  the  people 
who  purchased  of  them.1 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  trace  sickness  and  disease  to 
their  original  source,  but  the  advance  of  medical  science 
has  convinced  us  all  of  this :  that  uncleanness  in  the  pre- 
paration of  food  products  is  a  fruitful  source  of  disease. 
The  men  who  utilise  diseased  animals  for  food  products, 
or  so  prepare  those  products  that  filthy  and  germ- 
containing  material  is  mingled  with  them  must  inevit- 
ably breed  and  increase  disease.  What  the  packers  have 
done  is,  from  the  moral  stand-point,  no  worse  presum- 
ably than  what  a  great  many  other  individuals  have 
done,2  but  the  colossal  proportions  which  it  has  assumed 
make  it  a  national  danger  and  exalt  the  men  who  have 
been  guilty  of  greed  on  a  scale  so  enormous  to  the  pro- 
portions of  colossi  of  crime. 

But,  it  will  be  said,  these  men  deny  that  such  condi- 
tions exist.  That  is  true.  Unfortunately,  their  denial 
has  little  value.  In  view  of  the  way  in  which  these  in- 
vestigations have  been  made,  the  American  public  ought 
to  and  probably  will  pay  little  attention  to  the  pro- 
tests of  the  self-interested  packers, 

•  Compare  conditions  in  food  products  in  general,  and  in 
patent  medicines  and  drug  preparations,  which  have  led  to 
our  recent  pure  food  legislation. 

>  Compare  the  baking  industry  in  New  York  City,  and  pre- 
sumably in  some  other  cities  also. 


The  Real  Hell  109 

And  here,  it  may  be  added,  we  see  an  unfortunate  re- 
sult, not  only  of  recent  exposures  of  evil-doing,  but  also 
of  the  attitude  taken  both  by  the  men  who  have  been 
exposed  and  also  by  others  associated  with  them  from 
whom  the  public  had  supposed  it  could  expect  some- 
thing better.  When  evil-doing  was  charged  in  insur- 
ance companies,  in  railroads  and  the  like,  the  presidents 
and  directors  of  those  corporations,  men  whose  names 
up  to  that  time  had  carried  great  weight  with  the  public, 
declared,  first  in  open  letters  and  statements  and  then 
finally  on  the  stand  before  investigating  committees, 
that  there  was  nothing  wrong;  that  these  attacks  were 
gotten  up  by  interested  parties;  that  everything  was  as 
it  should  be.  The  results  of  investigation  have  shown 
that  those  men  were  uttering  falsehoods  and  the  same 
men,  when  pressed  hard  on  the  witness  stand,  deliber- 
ately perjured  themselves,  declaring  that  they  had 
forgotten  or  did  not  know  that  which  every  sane  man 
knew  that  they  knew.  The  result  has  been  that  the 
public  at  large  has  lost  confidence.  It  believes  that 
such  men  will  lie  to  protect  not  only  themselves,  but 
those  with  whom  they  have  been  associated  or  the 
financial  interests  with  which  they  are  connected ;  and 
having  this  belief  it  comes  to  suspect  that  every  large 
financial  concern  is  corrupt  and  engages  in  dishonourable 
methods  and  that  it  differs  from  those  which  have  been 
exposed  only  through  the  good  fortune  or  good  manage- 
ment which  has  enabled  it  up  to  the  present  time  to 
escape  detection.  I  say  this  is  one  of  the  unfortunate 
conditions  resulting  from  the  dishonesty  exhibited  by 
the  men  to  whom  the  public  had  looked  for  something 
better,  and  which  has  so  shaken  public  confidence  that 


i  io  Modern  Christianity 

all  railroad  presidents  and  officials,  officers  of  great 
trust  companies,  indeed  financiers  in  general  are  popu- 
larly regarded  as  criminals  who  should  not  be  believed 
on  oath  except  as  their  testimony  is  supported  by  facts 
proven  through  the  evidence  of  others.  It  is  a  horrible 
thing  to  have  been  thus  guilty  of  destroying  faith  in  the 
honesty  of  one's  fellow-men. 

But  to  return  to  my  theme,  for  I  wish  to  follow  this 
matter  of  the  moral  responsibility  of  the  packers  and  the 
evil  done  by  them.  There  are  not  only  men,  but  women 
also,  who  are  living  in  luxury  on  the  proceeds  of  these 
packing  industries — women,  delicate,  refined,  and  cul- 
tured, who  attend  church  and  are  communicants  there, 
who  join  organisations  for  missionary  effort  and  contri- 
bute to  them  money  which  is  oftentimes  the  soul-blood 
of  other  women  and  of  little  children.  How  do  these 
women  reconcile  themselves  to  their  part  in  the  matter? 
Do  they  feel  no  responsibility  for  the  men  and  women 
employed  under  such  conditions,  for  the  filth  and  the 
horrors  of  these  packing  houses  ?  I  suppose  that,  to  a 
very  large  extent,  they  are  in  ignorance  of  the  whole 
matter.  They  simply  do  not  know — and  do  not  care 
what  is  going  on.  Well-meaning,  kindly  towards  those 
in  their  own  circle,  towards  the  poor  and  needy  with 
whom  they  come  immediately  in  contact,  responding 
generously  to  appeals  for  sympathy  and  contributions 
for  missionary  and  benevolent  work,  their  responsibil- 
ity for  the  workers  through  whom  their  money  is  made, 
for  the  customers  buying  products  from  which  that 
money  is  derived,  never  enters  their  head.  Provided 
the  money  comes,  they  are  quite  content.  And  this  is 
not  merely  a  blind  trust  in  their  fathers  and  husbands 


The  Real  Hell  in 

and  brothers,  as  honest  and  good.  If  it  were  that  and 
that  only  there  might  be  much  excuse;  but  it  means, 
unfortunately,  much  more.  It  means  a  lack  of  that  ear- 
nest sense  of  responsibility  for  the  well-being  of  one's 
fellows,  which  is  an  essential  part  of  brotherly  love, 
and  therefore  which  is  an  essential  part  of  Christianity. 
These  women  are  like  the  princess  of  France,  who,  when 
told  of  the  starving  multitudes  in  Paris,  at  her  very 
doors,  who  had  no  bread,  asked,  quite  innocently,  "Then 
why  don't  they  eat  cake?"  The  old  prophets  judged 
the  women  who  lived  in  luxury  at  the  expense  of  the 
suffering  of  others  equally  guilty  with  the  men  who  did 
the  immediate  oppression.  The  fundamental  evil  in 
both  cases  is  selfishness.  They  live  primarily  for  them- 
selves, and  if  they  are  well  clothed  and  well  fed  and 
have  a  pleasant  house  and  pleasant  surroundings,  then 
their  responsibility  is  ended.  Here  are  the  words 
which  the  prophet  Amos  addressed  to  the  rich  and 
noble  women  of  Samaria — his  condemnation  of  them 
for  what  is  in  principle  the  same  thing  that  these 
women  are  doing: 

Hear  this  word,  ye  kine  of  Bashan, 

Who  are  in  Samaria's  mount, 

Who  oppress  the  poor, 

Who  crush  the  needy, 

Who  say  to  their  lords, 

"Bring  that  we  may  drink": 

The  Lord  hath  sworn  by  His  holiness 

That,  behold,  days  come  upon  you, 

When  they  shall  lift  you  with  hooks, 

The  remnant  of  you  with  fish-hooks, 

And  at  breaches  shall  ye  go  out,  each  for  herself, 

And  to  Armenia  shall  ye  be  hurled :  saith  the  Lord. 


ii2  Modern  Christianity 

And  in  a  similar  vein  Isaiah  denounces  the  rich  women 
of  Jerusalem,  holding  them  responsible  equally  with 
their  husbands  for  the  suffering  and  misery  on  which 
their  luxury  was  founded. 

And  now  what  further?  To  the  men  and  women  who 
are  responsible  for  these  conditions,  who  have  lived  a 
life  of  ease,  trampling  under  foot  their  employees,  de- 
grading the  souls  of  their  brothers,  the  men  and  women 
who  by  their  actual  practice  have  shown  that  they 
neither  know  nor  love  God,  there  will  come  a  day  of 
reckoning,  and  it  is  the  part  of  the  Church  to  declare 
that  fact  in  no  uncertain  terms.  To  preach  love  does 
not  mean  to  preach  an  emasculated  amiability  which, 
serenely  overlooking  the  evil,  declares  that  all  is  well,  all 
sin  is  forgiven,  and  all  men  shall  be  saved.  That  is 
no  more  Christian  love  than  is  the  attitude  of  the 
foolish  mother  who  is  unwilling  to  bear  the  unpleasant- 
ness and  the  difficulties  of  training  and  correcting 
her  child,  who  allows  the  child  to  be  ruined  because 
she  will  not  suffer  the  pain  of  correcting  and  re- 
proving it  and  training  it  to  do  right.  True  love 
is  of  sterner  and  harder  fibre  than  this.  True  love 
involves  sacrifice  and  pain  and  suffering.  Love  cannot 
exist  without  that,  and  precisely  because  the  Church 
teaches  love  it  must  also  teach  the  consequences  of 
the  lack  of  love.  But  some  one  may  say:  did  not  Jesus, 
when  a  poor  woman,  who  had  been  taken  in  her  sin,  was 
brought  before  Him,  refuse  to  condemn  her,  though 
the  law  demanded  that  she  should  be  stoned,  but  rather 
advise  that  she  should  be  allowed  to  go  free?  Surely 
He  did  so.  The  woman  was  a  convicted  and  acknow- 
ledged sinner.  The  consequences  of  her  sin  had  really 


The  Real  Hell  113 

been  visited  upon  her  already.  She  had  been  con- 
demned. And  to  any  one  who  confesses  his  sins,  who 
divests  himself  or  is  divested  of  the  profits  and  advan- 
tages derived  from  that  sin,  who  has  been  condemned, 
who  sits  in  sack-cloth  and  ashes,  the  Church  and 
Christian  society  may  well  show  mercy  and  forgiveness ; 
but  never  to  him  who  does  not  make  restitution,  who  is 
not  in  sack-cloth  and  ashes,  who  has  not  been  con- 
demned, who  contrives  to  avoid  condemnation  and 
seeks  to  evade  all  punishment  for  his  evil-doing.  It 
is  against  precisely  such  persons  as  this  that  the  Church 
must  thunder  out  its  denunciations  as  Christ  thundered 
out  His  denunciations  against  the  Scribes  and  Phari- 
sees, hypocrites. 

And  what  is  the  punishment  that  befalls  such  men? 
There  used  to  be  stern  preaching  of  a  hell  that  awaited 
the  sinner.  The  real  hell  that  awaits  the  man  that  sins 
is  not  that  physical  and  material  place  of  torture  which 
our  ancestors  painted  in  such  lurid  colors.  It  is  far 
more  terrible,  for  its  punishments  and  its  torments  are 
of  another  character. 

Have  you  ever  seen  a  man,  honoured  and  admired  by 
all  about  him,  attaining  high  position  in  society  and 
state,  a  courted  and  eagerly  sought  for  guest  at  dinner, 
one  on  whose  utterances  of  wit  and  wisdom  thousands 
hung,  revealed  suddenly  as  a  thief,  a  liar,  and  a  hypocrite, 
a  mean,  contemptible,  grovelling  soul;  and  have  you 
seen  all  his  friends  shrink  from  him  and  the  men  who 
courted  and  honoured  him  laugh  or  point  the  finger  of 
scorn  at  him  ?  Have  you  seen  him  afraid  to  pick  up  a 
newspaper,  which  used  to  sing  his  praises,  for  fear  he 
shall  see  a  cartoon  holding  him  up  to  ridicule,  a  para- 

8 


ii4  Modern  Christianity 

graph  making  him  an  object  of  scorn  and  contempt; 
afraid  to  go  into  the  clubs  which  were  once  his  courts, 
because  of  the  looks  that  he  will  meet,  because  men  there 
will  shun  him?  If  a  man  shall  have  lived  seventy  years 
of  prosperity,  and  then  have  but  two  years  to  live  under 
such  conditions  as  these,  I  think  that  the  torture,  the 
misery  he  will  suffer  in  those  two  years  will  far  more 
than  counterbalance  all  the  joy  and  pleasure  he  had  in 
the  seventy  years.  Do  you  realise  that  the  after  life  is 
like  that  ?  It  is  suddenly  to  see  oneself  condemned  be- 
fore God,  that  is,  very  literally  condemned  by  the  uni- 
verse; for  a  man  to  be  forced  to  see  himself  as  all  the 
universe  sees  him,  a  disgusting,  loathsome,  contemptible 
things  to  stand  naked  and  revealed  in  one's  own  sight 
and  the  sight  of  God,  all  self-respect  torn  away.  To 
the  man  who  realises  what  human  nature  is,  the  horrible 
character  of  the  punishment  which  attends  such  mis- 
doing is  only  too  evident. 

For  all  the  suffering  and  misery  a  man  brings  here  he 
must  on  his  part  suffer.  So  surely  as  heaven  cannot  be 
won  except  as  a  man  seeks  to  make  heaven  for  others, 
so  surely  as  a  man  saves  his  life  only  by  losing  it,  so 
surely  is  the  opposite  the  truth.  He  who  has  sought 
his  own  life  at  the  expense  of  the  life  of  others  has  de- 
stroyed his  own  soul;  and  he  who  has  founded  his  hap- 
piness on  the  suffering  of  others  has  laid  up  for  himself 
a  hell  hereafter. 


FORGIVENESS  OF  SINS 

EPHESIANS  iv.,  31-32:  Let  all  bitterness,  and  wrath,  and 
anger,  and  clamour,  and  evil  speaking,  be  put  away  from  you, 
with  all  malice :  and  be  ye  kind  one  to  another,  tender-hearted, 
forgiving  one  another,  even  as  God  for  Christ's  sake  hath  for- 
given you. 

ANGER,  or  resentment,  or  wrath,  is  a  natural  charac- 
teristic or  affection,  and,  like  all  natural  charac- 
teristics, is  useful  and  needful  in  its  proper  place.  It 
is  given  us  for  a  protection  against  injury,  individually 
and  socially,  that  is,  as  parts  of  a  community  in  which 
each  part  is  of  necessity  connected  with  and  dependent 
upon  every  other  part.  It  may  be  roughly  described 
as  passionate  or  brutal,  and  rational.  Pain  or  injury 
awakens  in  the  animal  a  sensation  or  sentiment  of 
anger  implanted  in  its  nature  for  self-preservation. 
This  anger  is  unreasoning,  and  the  lower  you  go  in 
the  brute  creation  the  more  unreasoning  you  find  it. 
It  is  directed  equally  against  objects  animate  and 
inanimate  and  makes  no  distinction  between  inten- 
tional and  unintentional  injury.  To  this  instinctive 
brute  anger  it  is  all  one  whether  the  pain  which  excites 
it  be  inflicted  with  good  or  evil  intent,  or  utterly 
without  any  intent  whatever.  The  general  character 
of  the  sentiment  of  anger  in  very  young  children  is 

"5 


n6  Modern  Christianity 

the  same,  sudden  and  unreasoning,  frequently  directed 
against  inanimate  objects,  or  against  those  who  inflict 
pain  for  some  benevolent  purpose. 

Now  this  sort  of  irrational,  physical  anger  in  grown 
people  is  wrong  and  sinful.  A  person  of  strong  charac- 
ter who  has  not  mastered  his  temper  is  aroused  to  sud- 
den bursts  of  fury ;  a  person  of  weak  character  is  more 
apt  to  display  his  lack  of  self-control  in  the  form  of  peev- 
ishness. But  passion  and  peevishness  are  frequently 
attributable,  not  to  wrong  done  by  others,  but  to  acci- 
dents, to  our  mistakes,  or  even  to  our  moods.  Again 
there  is  a  meanness  of  temper  often  shown  by  passionate 
or  peevish  persons  which  leads  them  to  vent  that  temper 
on  wholly  innocent  persons,  relatives  or  dependents,  or 
those  who  cannot  or  will  not  retaliate. 

One  who  has  yielded  to  passion  generally  feels  that 
he  has  done  wrong.  Nevertheless  such  a  man  will  often 
excuse  himself,  even  when  to  impartial  spectators  his 
anger  seems  wholly  inexcusable,  and,  shifting  the  blame 
from  himself,  seek  to  lay  it  upon  others.  In  the  case  of 
peevishness  people  are  still  less  apt,  than  in  the  case 
of  passion,  to  realise  the  wickedness  of  their  conduct. 
While  far  more  common  than  passion,  it  belongs  rather 
to  weaker  characters,  or  to  those  which  are  temporarily 
weakened.  It  is  a  frequent  concomitant  of  a  feeble 
state  of  health.  This  leads  both  the  peevish  person  and 
his  friends  the  more  readily  to  devise  excuses  for  the  in- 
dulgence of  the  vice.  Instead  of  making  a  strong  effort 
to  overcome  it,  we  encourage  it  in  ourselves  by  invent- 
ing plausible  excuses, — we  are  unwell,  and  it  cannot  be 
expected  that  we  should  be  good-natured ;  or  it  is  too  hot 
or  too  cold  for  comfort,  and  when  we  are  not  comfortable 


Forgiveness  of  Sins  117 

how  should  we  be  expected  to  keep  a  cheerful  face  and 
speak  kindly;  or  the  people  with  whom  we  live  are 
thoughtless,  or  careless,  or  stupid,  or  uncongenial,  and 
do  not  deserve  or  appreciate  kindness.  The  danger  is 
lest  we  convince  ourselves  that  these  excuses  are  true  or 
valid,  and  harden  temporary  petulance  or  irritability 
into  chronic  peevishness, — a  vice  which  renders  its  vic- 
tims only  less  unhappy  than  its  possessors. 

Under  the  influence  of  passion  or  peevishness  people 
are  wrong-headed :  it  seems  utterly  impossible  for  them 
to  see  clearly  where  the  real  blame  lies.  This  is  a  fact  of 
which  we  are  all  aware;  and  if  we  have  honestly  and 
faithfully  examined  ourselves,  our  own  conduct,  our 
words  and  acts,  and  the  state  of  mind  leading  to  those 
words  or  acts,  I  think  we  shall  have  learned  it  from  that 
examination.  There  are  few  indeed  among  us  who  do 
not  sometimes  yield  either  to  passion  or  petulance. 
Things  have  gone  wrong,  we  are  tired,  we  feel  out  of 
sorts,  we  are  busy  or  worried,  people  are  stupid  or  vex- 
atious, and  we  find  a  thousand  and  one  reasons  for 
venting  our  ill-nature.  I  do  not  suppose  there  is  a  per- 
son present  who  does  not  know  from  personal  experi- 
ence the  state  of  mind  to  which  I  refer.  And,  looking 
back  on  the  last  occasion  when  we  so  acted,  I  hope  that 
we  make  no  attempt  to  excuse  our  conduct,  but  honestly 
allow  that  we  were  to  blame.  As  soon  as  we  have  been 
rescued  from  such  a  mood,  putting  in  our  pockets  that 
mean  and  contemptible  false  pride  which  is  ashamed  to 
confess  itself  wrong,  we  should  go  and  own  our  wrong- 
doing to  those  whom  we  made  to  suffer  by  our  passion 
or  our  petulance.  To  gain  the  self-control  and  the  self- 
judgment  to  do  this  is  to  have  made  a  mighty  step 


n8  Modern  Christianity 

towards  ridding  ourselves  of  this  weakness  or  vice  of 
irrational  anger. 

Now  the  characteristic  of  the  form  of  anger  which  we 
have  thus  far  been  treating  is  that  it  is  not  controlled  by 
reason.  It  is  physical,  or  perhaps  rather  semi-physical, 
and  in  the  case  of  rational  beings  it  is  wrong.  The  se- 
cond class  of  anger,  wrath,  or  resentment  is  rational  or 
deliberate  anger.  Just  as  irrational  or  brutal  anger  has 
a  physical  basis,  so  has  rational  anger  an  intellectual  or 
moral  basis,  and  is  therefore  almost  peculiar  to  man, 
being  shared  only  in  a  very  inferior  degree  by  some  of 
the  more  highly  developed  animals.  Rational  or  de- 
liberate anger  is  intended  in  the  providence  of  God's 
nature  to  be  a  protection  to  us  against  moral  evil,  just 
as  irrational  anger  is  designed  to  be  a  preventive  against 
physical  evil.  This  rational  or  deliberate  anger,  wrath, 
or  resentment,  is  sometimes  right  and  sometimes  wrong* 
If  you  read  the  account  of  some  villainy  you  are,  or 
ought  to  be,  indignant.  Certain  characters  in  history 
are  odious  to  all  right-thinking  men  on  account  of  their 
crimes.  Reading  a  story,  we  oftentimes  work  ourselves 
into  a  state  of  indignation  against  the  villain  of  the  story. 
We  hear  of  bribery  in  our  legislatures,  or  municipal 
councils,  or  in  the  elections  to  public  office,  and  every 
honest  man  among  us  is  indignant  at  the  crime  com- 
mitted, and  anxious  to  see  both  bribed  and  briber  se- 
verely punished.  These  are  cases  where  the  feeling  of 
indignation  or  anger  is  right  and  laudable,  and  these  will 
illustrate  what  1  mean  by  the  moral  basis  of  deliberate  or 
rational  anger,  as  also  my  statement  that  this  anger  is 
intended  by  nature  as  a  protection  both  to  the  individ- 
ual and  to  society  against  moral  evil.  It  is  this  which 


Forgiveness  of  Sins  1 19 

guides  us  in  forming  a  dislike  to  and  assuming  an  atti- 
tude of  opposition  toward  the  wicked. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  rational  or  deliberate  anger  is  not 
necessarily  right.  If  a  person  has  made  choice  of  moral 
evil  instead  of  good,  then  his  dislikes,  that  is,  his  anger, 
may  be  directed  against  the  good  instead  of  against  the 
evil.  Or  a  man  may  have  made  part  choice  of  evil, 
and  guided  by  selfishness  in  some  form  he  will  then,  in 
certain  instances  or  directions,  conceive  dislike  or  anger 
toward  the  good.  Furthermore,  the  boundary  between 
irrational  and  rational  anger  is  not  always  well-defined, 
so  that  a  dislike,  a  deliberate  anger  toward  some  class  or 
individual,  may  be  the  ultimate  result  of  what  was  at 
first  mere  physical  passion  or  peevishness. 

In  general,  we  may  say,  deliberate,  rational  or  moral 
anger  should  be  directed  against  evil  rather  than  against 
the  evil-doer.  Society  for  its  own  protection  may  be 
obliged  to  direct  its  anger  against  the  evil-doers,  to 
punish  or  destroy  them,  as  a  means  of  extirpating  the 
hated  evil.  But,  as  individuals,  even  our  right  and 
proper  anger  against  the  evil  never  absolves  us  from  our 
duty  of  love  and  helpfulness  towards  every  individual, 
good  or  bad. 

And  now  let  us  consider  more  directly  our  relations 
toward  those  whom  we  regard  as  evil-doers  against  our- 
selves. In  the  nature  of  the  case,  in  matters  which  con- 
cern us  or  ours,  we  are  not  impartial  judges,  and  should 
therefore  be  the  more  careful  how  we  take  offence.  It 
is  manifest,  when  we  consider  the  case  of  others,  that 
misinterpretation  lies  at  the  bottom  of  very  many  quar- 
rels. This  creates  a  presumption  that  in  our  own  case 
we  also  misinterpret  the  actions  of  others  towards  our- 


120  Modern  Christianity 

selves.  We  do  not  judge  others  by  the  lenient  standards 
we  commonly  apply  to  ourselves.  Unwilling  ourselves 
to  assume  the  blame  for  our  failures  or  misfortunes,  in 
hasty  anger  or  deliberate  resentment  we  attribute  our 
own  faults  to  others  and  vent  on  them  the  indignation 
which  should  of  right  be  directed  against  ourselves. 
Just  as  when  a  child,  through  carelessness,  falls  and 
hurts  itself  its  wrath  is  directed  against  the  naughty 
stick  or  stone,  or  whatever  else  has  been  the  cause  of  its 
pain,  or  against  the  innocent  boy  or  girl,  or  whosoever 
placed  the  unfortunate  obstacle  in  that  position ;  so  we, 
when  our  ignorance  or  carelessness  has  brought  some 
harm  upon  us,  build  thereon  a  quarrel  with  some  inno- 
cent, or,  at  the  most,  heedless  person,  whom  we  persist 
in  regarding  as  the  cause  of  our  injury.  Nothing  can  be 
more  pernicious  to  our  own  character  than  to  turn  our 
resentment  for  our  failures  and  shortcomings  against 
others  instead  of  against  ourselves.  It  makes  us  morbid, 
dries  up  every  fountain  of  love  in  our  nature,  and  para- 
lyses our  whole  moral  system. 

Ill-health,  bad  weather,  fatigue,  petty  misfortunes 
and  unpleasantnesses  affecting  our  feelings  may  deter- 
mine, as  I  have  already  said,  our  treatment  of  those 
about  us,  being  visited  on  them  as  the  guilty  parties. 
This  ultimately  leads  to  quarrels  in  which  we  regard 
ourselves  as  the  aggrieved  and  innocent  party.  Again, 
envy,  commonly  not  acknowledged,  of  the  position, 
friendships,  natural  endowments,  advantages,  successes 
of  others  leads  us,  ourselves  not  so  successful,  or  so 
gifted,  or  so  beautiful,  or  so  popular,  to  misjudge  and 
backbite.  The  result  is  that  we  ultimately  win  the  hatred 
of  those  whose  only  sin  against  us  was  the  possession  of 


Forgiveness  of  Sins  121 

that  which  we  desired,  and  having, by  our  own  conduct, 
made  them  hate  us,  we  accuse  them  of  having  picked 
the  quarrel  with  us. 

All  this  is  simple  common  sense.  To  assure  ourselves 
of  its  truth  in  our  own  case,  we  have  merely  to  apply  to 
ourselves  the  same  standard  which  we  apply  to  those 
about  us.  Regard  yourself,  not  as  an  exception  to  rule, 
but  as  an  average  human  being,  and  this  must  become 
manifest  to  your  reason.  We  say  of  others  that  a  quar- 
rel is  impossible  without  two  persons,  and  we  recognise 
the  fact  that  every  story  has  two  sides  to  it.  But  what 
is  true  of  our  neighbours  is  equally  true  of  you  and  me : 
and,  if  we  are  unable  to  get  along  peaceably  with  those 
about  us,  it  is  almost  absolutely  certain  that  part  of  the 
fault  lies  with  ourselves. — perhaps,  indeed,  we  are  the 
most  to  blame.  At  the  least,  •  common  sense  should 
show  us  that  we  are  not  impartial  judges  in  the  matter, 
and  that,  as  we  are  certainly  in  some  part  to  blame,  we 
should  make  great  allowances  for  the  conduct  of  the 
other  party;  and,  if  matters  have  come  to  an  open 
breach,  will  do  well  to  waive  what  we  conceive  to  be  our 
rights,  and  take  steps  toward  a  restoration  of  amicable 
relations. 

But  besides  all  this,  there  is  doubtless  evil  done  to  us, 
people  do  sin  against  us.  Now,  the  philosophy  of  com- 
mon sense  shows  us,  or  should  show  us,  two  things.  In 
the  first  place  it  shows  us  that  their  sin  against  us  is  less 
than  we  count  it  to  be,  and  that,  perhaps,  we  are  not 
ourselves  entirely  without  blame.  In  the  second  place, 
a  study  of  human  nature  shows  us  that  this  sentiment 
of  anger  or  resentment  is  implanted  in  us  for  a  defence 
against  injury,  and  that  indulgence  in  that  sentiment  in 


122  Modern  Christianity 

the  form  of  retaliation  is  not  admissible.  For,  leaving 
out  of  view  the  partiality  with  which  we  necessarily  per- 
ceive those  things  which  concern  ourselves,  and  which 
would  therefore  cause  us  to  retaliate  in  a  manner  out  of 
all  proportion  to  the  original  injury,  the  inevitable  re- 
sult of  retaliation  is  to  increase  injury  by  awakening 
or  fostering  hatred  and  ill-will,  which  will  again  be 
vented  in  injury. 

Hitherto  I  have  treated  the  subject  of  anger  from  the 
point  of  view  of  an  entirely  unemotional  and  finite 
rationality.  But  the  highest  philosophy  of  the  human 
must  take  into  consideration  not  merely  the  rational, 
but  also  the  sentimental  element  in  man ;  and  not  merely 
the  relation  of  man  to  the  finite,  but  also  to  the  infinite. 
The  highest  and  most  perfect  philosophy  of  human  life 
in  existence  is  that  which  was  set  forth  in  the  teaching 
and  in  the  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

We  speak  of  ourselves  as  having  sinned  against  God 
and  of  God  as  having  forgiven  our  sins.  We  speak  also 
of  the  wrath  of  God,  and  pray  Him  to  avert  that  wrath 
from  us.  But  I  am  afraid  that  a  false  conception  of  the 
nature  and  occasion  of  God's  wrath  is  very  prevalent, 
which  regards  God  as  personally  angry,  if  I  may  so 
speak.  We  pray  to  God  as  though  He  were  a  human 
being  vexed  by  a  personal  affront,  whom  we  are  seek- 
ing to  propitiate.  But  if  we  understand  aright  what 
God's  wrath  really  is,  our  need  of  redemption  from  sin 
becomes  more  apparent,  and  the  method  of  its  execution 
both  more  intelligible  and  more  glorious.  Sin  is  a  contra- 
diction of  our  nature;  it  prevents  the  individual  from 
attaining  the  full  proportion  and  harmony  of  his  being; 
it  entails  sorrow  and  suffering  upon  the  race.  In  our 


Forgiveness  of  Sins  123 

poor  human  language  we  say  that  God  is  angry  when  we 
contradict  the  law  of  nature,  the  nature  that  is  within 
us,  or  the  nature  that  is  without  us,  thus  bringing  upon 
ourselves  or  others  sorrow  and  suffering.  All  suffering 
is  the  result  of  the  violation  of  God's  law  in  the  physical 
or  moral  universe;  it  is  the  result  of  ignorance  or  sin. 

Now  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  God  incarnate  in  man, 
perfect  man,  without  ignorance  or  sin,  and  therefore 
possessed  of  a  power  to  overcome  in  others  the  results 
of  sin  and  ignorance,  namely,  suffering  and  death. 
Rightly  understood,  His  miracles  seem  to  me  to  be  not 
only  miracles,  but  parables  also.  He  revealed  the  Fa- 
ther to  us,  making  manifest  to  man  the  actions  of  God 
our  Father.  For  God  our  Father  loves  His  children  and 
is  continually  showing  them  His  love  and  mercy.  And 
that  we  might  the  better  understand  what  we  must  do, 
He  sent  us  His  Son,  the  Christ,  incarnate  as  son  of  man 
in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  allowed  Him  to  work  before 
our  eyes  manifestly  the  works  which  He  himself  doeth. 
One  of  the  best  explanations  of  the  meaning  of  Christ's 
miracles,  and  His  exposition  of  the  relation  of  sin  and 
suffering,  is  to  be  found  in  the  story  of  the  palsied  man, 
who  was  brought  and  laid  at  Jesus'  feet.  Jesus  said  to 
him:  "Son,  be  of  good  cheer,  thy  sins  be  forgiven  thee." 
The  Scribes  were  of  the  opinion  that  He  blasphemed  in 
claiming  to  forgive  sins,  which  was  a  divine  prerogative. 
The  palsied  man  still  lay  sick  on  his  bed  before  Him. 
Jesus  turned  to  the  Pharisees  and  asked  whether  it  were 
easier  to  say,  "Thy  sins  be  forgiven  thee,"  or  to  say, 
"Arise  and  walk."  Then  He  turned  to  the  palsied  man 
and  said:  "Arise,  take  up  thy  bed  and  go  unto  thine 
house."  Then  the  palsied  man  was  healed,  and  arose 


124  Modern  Christianity 

and  departed  to  his  house.  This  miracle,  treating  as 
it  does  the  healing  of  physical  infirmity  as  a  necessary 
result  of  the  forgiveness  of  sin,  so  that  it  is  all  one 
whether  the  Saviour  say,  "Thy  sins  be  forgiven  thee," 
or  "Arise  and  walk,"  does  then  distinctly  set  before 
us  the  fact  that  suffering  is  the  result  of  sin. 

We  must  not,  however,  leap  to  the  conclusion  that  it 
was  the  man's  own  sin,  or  even  the  sin  of  his  parents  for 
which  he  was  suffering,  as  Jesus  taught  upon  another 
occasion.  Suffering  is  the  result  of  sin  in  the  world,  but 
the  sufferings  of  an  individual  are  not  necessarily  the 
punishment  of  that  individual,  or  of  any  individuals 
whom  we  can  determine.  If  we  can  remove  sin  from  the 
world  we  shall  remove  suffering.  This  thought  appears 
in  the  visions  of  the  old  prophets,  when  they  told  of 
Messiah's  kingdom.  In  that  kingdom  all  should  be  love, 
the  lion  and  the  lamb  lying  down  together,  the  bear 
giving  up  his  violence  and  eating  hay  like  an  ox,  the 
little  child  playing  unharmed  with  venomous  serpents, 
none  hurting  or  destroying  in  all  the  holy  mount.  The 
miracles  of  Jesus  are  parables  of  the  way  mankind  shall 
reach  that  paradise, — by  putting  away  sin.  It  is  not 
that  forgiveness  of  sins  means  for  us  as  individuals 
that  we  shall  not  suffer  here  on  earth  physical  ills.  For 
us  as  individuals  the  removal  of  these  ills  belongs  to  the 
hereafter.  But  for  the  race  man  the  removal  of  igno- 
rance and  sin  means  the  attainment  of  perfection,  the 
removal  of  suffering  and  sorrow.  The  miracle  of  the 
healing  of  the  palsied  man,  whose  restoration  to  physi- 
cal health  followed  the  removal  of  his  sins,  is  a  parable 
of  the  result  to  mankind  of  this  removal  of  sin. 

But  Jesus  distinctly  states  that  He  healed  the  palsied 


Forgiveness  of  Sins  125 

man,  after  removing  his  sins,  as  a  proof  that  the  Son  of 
man  hath  power  on  earth  to  forgive  sins.  He  did  it, 
that  is,  in  His  capacity,  not  of  Son  of  God,  but  of  Son  of 
man.  He  did  it  by  virtue  of  that  nature  which  He 
shared  with  us,  and  in  order  to  show  us  what  we  also 
may  do. 

We  have  retained  an  ancient  rite  in  the  Church  by 
which  all  members  are  ordained  priests  of  God.  The 
Bishop,  in  confirmation,  by  laying  on  of  hands,  ordains 
each  child  of  the  Church  a  priest  of  God,  whose  duty 
and  privilege  it  is  to  forgive  sins,  even  as  Christ,  our 
great  high-priest,  forgave  sins.  Every  time  you  and  I 
forgive  sins  we  are  following  the  example  of  our  Master 
and  exemplar,  Jesus  the  Christ;  we  are  removing  some 
sorrow  and  suffering  from  the  world.  We  may  not  say 
to  a  palsied  man  "Arise  and  walk " ;  but  if  we  will  say  in 
word  and  deed  to  any  who  have  wronged  us,  "Thy  sins 
be  forgiven  thee,"  we  are  helping  to  heal  of  its  sickness 
mankind,  palsied  with  sorrow,  and  toil,  and  pain.  Each 
sin  against  yourself  which  you  forgive  is  pain  and  misery 
removed  from  some  one  that  comes  after  you.  Each  sin 
to  which  you  refuse  forgiveness  is  more  misery  for  those 
that  follow,  if  not  for  ourselves.  Jesus  the  Christ  re- 
vealed to  man  the  deeds  of  His  Father;  so,  also,  we, 
when  we  forgive,  reveal  to  men  our  Father  in  heaven, 
the  God  of  love  and  mercy.  As  Jesus  by  His  miracles  of 
sin  forgiven  and  sickness  healed  showed  forth  God  unto 
men,  so  that  they  knew  Him,  and  came  to  Him  and 
were  saved;  so  we,  when  we  forgive  sins,  show  forth 
God  unto  men,  and  bring  them  to  a  knowledge  of  Him 
that  they  may  be  saved. 

And  one  word  more.    We  who  accuse  others  of  sin 


126  Modern  Christianity 

are  ourselves  sinful.  As  we  would  be  forgiven,  so  must 
we  forgive.  On  this  condition  we  have  free  forgiveness 
from  Him  against  whom  we  have  sinned.  God  sent  His 
Son,  Jesus  Christ,  to  live  and  die  for  us,  and  by  this  life 
and  death  to  breathe  into  the  world  the  principle  of  love, 
that  charity  which  is  better  than  all  gifts,  which  abideth 
still  in  heaven  when  all  else  has  passed  away.  The  ex- 
ample of  His  great  mercy  and  goodness,  of  His  love  and 
forgiveness,  are  meant  to  win  us  to  the  endeavour  to  live 
a  life  like  His,  setting  love  above  all  things,  renouncing 
ourselves  and  our  selfishness,  forgetting  our  own  rights 
and  wrongs,  and  forgiving  and  forgetting  as  we  hope 
that  our  sins  may  be  forgiven  and  forgotten.  Who 
strives  to  lead  this  life,  he  it  is  whose  sins  are  completely 
and  for  ever  washed  away  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb. 


RITES  AND   SACRAMENTS 

ACTS  viii.,  17:  Then  laid  they  their  hands  on  them,  and 
they  received  the  Holy  Ghost. 

THE  value  of  right  forms  and  of  right  doctrines  must 
not  be  minimised.  They  have  their  place,  and 
that  a  place  of  great  value  in  the  Christian  life.  But  it 
must  always  be  recognised  that  forms  and  doctrines  are 
the  means  by  which  we  seek  to  attain  something  else,  and 
that  something  else  is  character.  When  we  say  that  we 
preach  Christ  and  Him  crucified,  we  mean  that  we  hold 
up  the  doctrines  of  Jesus*  life  to  men  as  the  life  which 
they  should  live;  His  sacrifice  as  the  ideal  toward  which 
we  strive,  the  readiness  to  sacrifice  ourselves  for  the 
good  of  the  world,  for  the  uplift  of  those  about  us.  We 
are  all  agreed  that  if  we  were  on  a  sinking  ship,  our  part, 
the  manly  part,  the  noble  part,  would  be  not  to  seek  to 
save  ourselves,  but  first  of  all  to  endeavour  to  save  the 
weakest  on  that  ship,  the  children  and  the  women,  sacri- 
ficing, if  need  be,  our  lives  in  the  effort.  Even  if  we 
should  not,  when  tested,  live  up  to  that  ideal,  it  is, 
nevertheless,  our  ideal  of  the  life  that  is  worth  living. 
It  were  better  to  give  up  one's  life  in  such  a  case,  thereby 
saving  others,  or  even  only  trying  to  save  others,  than 
to  save  ourselves  and  let  them  perish,  for  the  life  thus 
saved  would  not  be  worth  having.  Precisely  that  ideal 

127 


128  Modern  Christianity 

Christ  holds  up  to  us  for  our  daily  life.  In  that 
spirit  He  lived  among  men  and  died ;  and  we  say  that 
that  is  the  noble  life,  the  life  worth  living,  which,  in  all 
its  acts,  not  merely  in  one  great  crisis,  but  day  by  day,  is 
lived  with  that  principle,  that  idea.  That  happiness  is 
not  worth  having  which  is  won  for  one's  self  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  misery  and  suffering  of  others;  nor  the 
health,  the  wealth,  the  opportunities  which  are  achieved 
for  one's  self,  forgetful  of  the  poverty  of  others,  regard- 
less of  the  sufferings  of  others,  without  an  effort  to 
make  our  opportunity  the  opportunity  of  others. 

To  the  despondent,  to  the  fallen  we  preach  Christ 
and  Him  crucified,  as  a  manifestation  of  the  infinite 
love  and  pity  of  God ;  that  God  so  loved  precisely  those 
who  are  weak,  who  cannot  stand  upright,  who  mourn 
and  are  distressed,  that  He  gave  His  Son  for  them.  He 
has  poured  out  His  own  life  blood,  as  it  were,  in  sym- 
pathy with  their  sufferings,  to  save  and  bring  them  to 
Himself.  We  preach  to  them  salvation  in  Christ,  be- 
cause Christ  is  the  exhibition  of  the  infinite  love  of  God, 
the  outstretching  of  the  arms  of  a  Heavenly  Father,  the 
yearning  of  a  heart  more  tender  even  than  a  mother's 
for  its  offspring. 

But  while  the  great  effort  of  Christianity  is  thus  to 
form  character,  to  uplift  and  upbuild  the  weak  and  ig- 
norant, to  inspire  all  alike  with  the  divine  spirit  of  love, 
the  spirit  of  service  and  of  sacrifice,  it  should  also  be 
recognised  that  for  the  very  purpose  of  achieving  these 
results  there  must  be  some  sort  of  organisation,  some 
sort  of  belief,  some  sort  of  forms  by  which  Christian  men 
are  bound  together  and  by  which  they  may  express 
themselves  to  themselves  and  to  one  another.  The  form, 


Rites  and  Sacraments  129 

then,  while  not  the  essential  thing,  becomes  a  thing  of 
great  importance;  and  so  it  was  that  from  the  outset  the 
Christian  Church  adopted  certain  forms  which  became 
both  the  marks  to  distinguish  and  the  bonds  to  unite 
Christians.  The  entrance  of  the  Christian  into  the 
Christian  life  was  effected  outwardly  through  Baptism. 
The  particular  symbol  chosen  was  the  symbol  of  cleans- 
ing, of  refreshment  and  of  new  life.  As  the  weary  trav- 
eller on  those  dusty  sun-beaten  roads  of  the  East 
reaches  the  rare  stream  and,  plunging  beneath  its  waters, 
washes  off  the  stains  of  travel  and  finds  refreshment 
in  its  cooling  flood,  emerging  new-born,  clean,  fresh, 
with  renewed  strength  and  courage;  so  the  Christian  was 
dipped  in  the  waters  of  Baptism  to  symbolise  and,  in  a 
manner,  to  effect  the  putting  off  the  stains  and  sins  of 
the  life  that  had  been,  dying  to  which  he  was  to  rise 
again,  fresh  and  strong,  born  into  a  new  life,  the  life  of 
Christ. 

To  the  early  Christian,  living  in  a  world  corrupt, 
bestial,  and  selfish,  Baptism,  the  sign  of  the  acceptance 
of  the  life  of  Christ,  meant  in  a  very  peculiar  sense  sal- 
vation. The  division  between  the  world  and  the 
Christian  was  a  division  in  the  whole  aim  and  con- 
ception of  life,  a  division  between  the  life  of  sense 
and  the  life  of  spirit;  and  every  one  who  accepted 
the  higher  spiritual  idea  of  the  life  to  be  lived,  of 
the  character  to  be  sought,  of  necessity  entered  the 
Christian  Church  and  was  baptised — baptised  at  the 
risk  of  death,  of  social  ostracism,  of  financial  ruin,  of 
domestic  unhappiness,  of  continued  petty  annoyance 
and  persecution  his  life  through.  Baptism  meant,  in 
very  truth,  to  take  up  the  cross  of  Christ,  to  live  a  life 


130  Modern  Christianity 

of  sacrifice;  and  so  it  was  that  the  Christian  Church  em- 
phasised the  distinction  between  the  Christian  and  the 
world  in  that  assertion,  with  which  we  are  all  familiar, 
of  the  damnation  of  him  who  is  not  baptised.  It  is  an 
expression  of  the  truth  that  salvation  lies  only  in  the 
development  of  a  character  patterned  after  the  charac- 
ter of  God,  in  the  development  of  the  divine  life  in  the 
man,  in  the  aspiration  after  a  divine  ideal  of  love  and 
sacrifice.  The  outward  and  the  inward  were  so  con- 
nected in  fact  in  those  early  days  that  that  might  liter- 
ally be  said  which,  when  said  to-day,  gives  us  a  shock, 
because  to-day  we  find,  outside  of  the  pale  of  the  Christ- 
ian Church,  many  men  living  a  Christlike  life. 

Another  sacrament  there  was  which,  in  its  outward 
form,  appealed  to  and  explained  itself  to  every  man  of  the 
olden  time,  Jew  and  heathen  alike — the  Sacrament  of 
the  Eucharist,  the  Holy  Communion.  While  Baptism 
was  the  sacrament  of  initiation,  the  birth  once  for  all 
into  the  Church  of  Christ  and  the  life  of  Christ,  the 
Eucharist,  the  Holy  Communion,  was  a  constantly  re- 
curring sacrament;  the  recognition  of  the  need  in  spirit- 
ual life  of  precisely  that  which  we  find  necessary  in  the 
bodily  life,  a  continual  strengthening  and  refreshing. 
Following  the  old  sacrificial  rites  and  customs  in  use 
among  all  nations  from,  one  might  almost  say,  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world,  the  daily  food  of  man  was  taken 
as  the  sacrificial  element.  In  and  by  that  which  he 
used  constantly,  by  a  special  consecration  of  it  for  a 
special  purpose,  he  was  to  receive  divine  life,  to  become 
a  sharer  in  that  life  which  even  the  rudest  men  have 
recognised  as  existing,  yes,  and  existing  within  them- 
selves, so  that  they  have  counted  themselves  as  in  some 


Rites  and  Sacraments  131 

way  of  kin  to  God.  He  was  to  receive  God  and  feast 
with  God  and  in  that  feast  to  be  united  in  a  special  bond 
of  brotherhood  with  those  who  partook  of  the  divine 
food  with  him.  First  the  initiation,  then  the  constantly 
recurring  brotherhood  feast,  asserting  and  effecting  a 
firm  tie  of  communion  of  Christians  one  with  another, 
and  an  individual  and  a  common  participation  in  the 
divine  life,  for  the  continual  strengthening  and  refresh- 
ing of  that  divine  element  which  we  recognise  as  at  least 
latent  in  ourselves,  and  by  which  we  are  akin  to  God 
our  Father. 

It  is  very  simple,  and  the  democracy  of  it  is  both  very 
beautiful  and  very  uplifting.  A  simplicity  and  democ- 
racy which  choose  every-day  things,  which  all  may  take 
and  have,  and  in  doing  so  sanctify  the  every-day  life,  the 
every-day  actions  of  man,  giving  to  his  daily  life  and 
his  daily  needs  a  spiritual  significance  and  symbolism. 
Connected  with  that  Holy  Communion,  by  its  very  re- 
lation to  the  death  of  Jesus,  was  also  a  further  sacrificial 
thought,  which,  as  I  have  said,  is  fundamental  in  Chris- 
tianity— the  conception  of  service  and  self-sacrifice. 
However  the  outward  form  of  this  sacrament  has  been 
changed,  whatever  alien  element  may  have  crept  in  at 
any  place  or  any  time  among  its  rites  and  its  doctrines, 
the  sacrament  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  does 
inevitably  hold  up  to  men  as  the  very  centre  of  the 
Christian  faith  and  the  Christian  life  the  sacrifice  of 
Christ,  and  therefore  has  been  a  moulding  power  in  the 
life  and  character  of  Christians  through  all  the  ages  and 
must  continue  to  be  so.  For  the  control  of  our  lives,  the 
formation  of  our  characters,  we  depend  not  merely  on 
pure  reason;  we  are  affected  by  what  we  see  and  feel  and 


132  Modern  Christianity 

hear,  by  our  imaginations  and  our  emotions,  by  our 
environment,  by  our  acts  and  our  customs.  The  sense 
life  is  an  essential  part  of  our  being  and  this  sacrament 
has,  I  will  venture  to  say,  by  its  constant  visible,  and, 
as  it  were,  tangible  testimony  to  the  meaning  of  Chris- 
tianity, been  vastly  more  powerful  in  the  formation 
of  Christian  character  and  the  development  of  Christian 
civilisation  than  all  the  sermons  that  the  best  preachers 
have  ever  preached. 

Other  rites  and  ceremonies  have  been  regarded  more 
or  less  in  the  Christian  Church  as  having  sacramental 
value  (Roman  Catholics,  for  example,  speak  of  seven 
sacraments) ;  but,  whatever  value  these  other  rites  and 
ceremonies  may  have,  the  Christian  Church  as  a  whole 
has  never  placed  them  on  the  same  footing  as  these  two 
sacraments,  Baptism  and  the  Supper  of  the  Lord,  which 
were  instituted  by  our  Master  himself. 

From  the  outset  in  the  Christian  Church,  as  a  neces- 
sary corollary  to  the  belief  in  the  solidarity  of  parent 
and  child  and  the  responsibility  of  parent  for  child,  the 
children  of  believers  were  baptised.  In  all  common  sense 
it  should  be  so.  The  greatest  influence  on  the  life  of  a 
child  is  the  life  and  belief  of  its  parents.  Under  normal 
conditions  the  child  accepts  what  the  parent  accepts, 
and  if  the  parent's  conception  of  life  be  the  Christian 
conception  of  a  life  of  service  and  sacrifice,  the  child  is  as 
likely  to  inherit  that  from  the  parent  as  it  is  to  inherit 
the  parent's  peculiarities  of  form  and  figure,  of  colouring 
and  of  temperament;  and  by  inheritance  I  mean  here 
not  only  that  which  comes  with  parentage  proper,  but 
that  which  comes  with  the  rearing  of  the  child  by  the 
parents,  the  association,  the  environment  of  the  family 


Rites  arid  Sacraments  133 

and  home  life.  It  was,  therefore,  simply  common  sense 
that  the  parent  who  had  brought  a  child  into  the  world 
should  conceive  that  it  was  his  duty  to  bring  that  child 
into  the  Church  and  present  it  for  baptism  as  a  Christian, 
with  no  more  question  as  to  its  religious  than  he  would 
have  as  to  its  physical  parentage.  But  because  children 
were  thus  admitted  into  the  Church,  there  came  also  the 
necessity  of  providing  some  means  by  which  the  child, 
arrived  at  years  of  discretion,  should  itself  make  profes- 
sion of  its  aim  in  life,  consecrating  itself  to  the  Christian 
service. 

I  have  chosen  for  my  text  a  passage  which  may  show 
you  how  early  in  the  Christian  Church  the  rite  of  Con- 
firmation was  practised.  Here  we  are  told  of  the  confir- 
mation by  the  Apostles  of  those  who  had  already  been 
baptised  at  Samaria  by  others.  Those  who  had  been 
baptised  and  brought  into  the  Christian  Church  were 
adults.  They  had  been  baptised  by  what  you  may  call 
local  ministers.  The  heads  of  the  Church  from  Jerusa- 
lem were  then  sent  for,  a  recognition,  you  will  observe, 
of  the  solidarity  of  the  Church,  of  a  great  Christian 
organisation.  These  heads  of  the  Church,  the  Apostles, 
laid  their  hands  upon  the  heads  of  these  newly  baptised 
persons  and  prayed  to  God  that  He  would  give  them 
His  Holy  Spirit.  They  set  them  apart  from  the  world 
as  consecrated  to  the  service  of  Christ,  and  prayed 
that  they  might  be  indued  with  the  Spirit  of  God  to 
strengthen  them  in  that  service.  This  laying  on  of 
hands  was  an  ancient  custom  in  religious  life.  It  was 
the  means  by  which,  in  Jewish  use,  persons  were  set 
apart  for  some  special  service  or  ministry.  The  Christ- 
ians took  over  the  custom.  They  laid  their  hands 


134  Modern  Christianity 

on  the  head  of  him  who  was  to  be  consecrated  for 
any  given  work  and  prayed  God  that  His  Holy  Spirit 
might  be  given  to  this,  His  servant,  to  enable  him  to 
do  that  work  faithfully  and  with  power.  When  they 
sent  out  missionaries,  as,  for  example,  Paul  and 
Barnabas,  they  laid  their  hands  on  their  heads  and 
consecrated  them  for  their  mission  work.  When  they 
introduced  in  the  early  Church  deacons  to  minister  and 
to  serve  among  the  needy,  they  laid  their  hands  on  the 
heads  of  those  who  were  thus  to  serve,  and  prayed  to 
God  to  give  them  His  Holy  Spirit  to  enable  them  faith- 
fully and  effectively  to  perform  their  work. 

And  the  same  plan  was  pursued  with  the  Church  at 
large.  In  the  conception  of  the  Christian  Church  every 
member  is  a  priest,  in  the  sense  in  which  Jesus  Christ 
was  a  priest.  It  is  his  part  to  offer  a  sacrifice,  and  that 
sacrifice  is  himself.  In  our  own  Church,  when  we  come 
to  receive  the  Communion  we  say:  "Here  we  offer  unto 
Thee  ourselves,  our  souls  and  bodies,  to  be  a  reasonable, 
holy,  and  living  sacrifice  unto  Thee."  The  laying  on  of 
hands  meant  the  consecration  of  each  Christian  believer 
into  that  universal  priesthood  of  the  Church.  He  who 
was  baptised  in  infancy,  born  into,  initiated  into  the 
Christian  Church,  at  the  age  of  discretion  came  and 
openly  made  his  confession  of  his  faith,  his  declaration 
of  his  intention  to  try  to  live  the  life  of  Chnst,  and  then 
the  hands  of  one  of  the  heads  of  the  Church,  an  apostle 
or  a  bishop,  were  laid  upon  his  head  to  consecrate  him 
to  that  service. 

That  is  what  Confirmation  means.  In  present  condi- 
tions there  are  numerous  Christian  bodies — the  greater 
part  of  the  Protestant  churches  about  us — who  have  not 


Rites  and  Sacraments  135 

retained  this  ancient  rite  of  Confirmation.  A  part  of  it 
they  have  in  some  cases  retained,  the  individual  side, 
the  declaration  of  his  faith  openly  before  the  congre- 
gation by  him  who  had  been  baptised  as  an  infant. 
They  have  not  retained  that  part  of  the  ceremony  which 
indicates  the  consecration  of  the  individual  by  the 
Church  at  large,  the  whole  Body  of  Christ  through  its 
representative  or  head,  the  Bishop,  thus  binding  all  to- 
gether in  one  great  organisation.  But  inasmuch  as  we 
count  Baptism  and  the  Supper  of  the  Lord  as  standing 
on  a  different  footing  from  all  other  rites  and  ordinances 
in  the  Christian  Church,  and  inasmuch  as  these  are  ac- 
cepted and  used  in  their  entirety  by  these  Protestant 
churches,  it  is  not  our  practice  to  insist  upon  the  Con- 
firmation of  those  who  have  already  by  profession  be- 
come communicants  in  other  Christian  churches.  In 
this  we  are  Catholic.  We  recognise  the  great  communion 
of  Christian  believers  in  Christ,  and  however  much  we 
value  those  ancient  rites  which  have  come  down  to  us 
from  the  earliest  days  of  the  Church,  we  will  not  let 
them  stand  before  those  things  which  the  Church  of 
all  times  has  counted  the  nearest  approach  to  essen- 
tials that  any  forms  can  be — namely,  the  sacraments 
of  Baptism  and  Holy  Communion.  Hence  we  receive 
gladly  as  communicants  all  members  of  the  Church, 
all  baptised  persons  who  come  to  us  as  communicants 
from  other  religious  organisations;  but  to  those  who 
grow  up  as  children  in  the  Church,  or  who  come  to 
us  not  having  already  made  profession  of  their  faith 
and  become  communicants  elsewhere  Confirmation  is 
the  door  of  entrance  to  the  full  privileges  and  the  full 
duties  of  the  Christian. 


136  Modern  Christianity 

It  is,  as  I  have  set  forth,  an  ancient,  a  very  ancient 
rite,  practised  by  the  Apostles.  It  is  the  declaration  of 
the  personal  acceptance  by  the  Christian  of  his  obliga- 
tion as  a  Christian  to  try  to  live  the  life  of  Christ,  to  ac- 
cept as  the  ideal  of  his  life  the  life  of  service  and  sacrifice. 
It  is  also  a  recognition  of  his  own  weakness  and  his  need 
of  divine  strength  to  do  this.  Confirmation  is  further 
a  recognition  of  the  fact  that  no  man  may  live  his  life  to 
himself;  that  there  is  a  great  community  of  which  he 
is  but  a  part,  of  which  even  the  parish  in  which  he  makes 
his  profession  of  faith  is  but  a  part ;  so  that  for  the  pur- 
pose of  Confirmation  it  is  not  the  priest  of  the  parish 
but  the  Bishop  of  the  Church  who  is  called  upon  to  lay 
his  hands  upon  the  head  of  the  person  to  be  confirmed. 
There  is  thus  a  recognition  of  a  work  which  must  be 
done  by  the  body  of  Christians  as  a  whole,  in  which  the 
individual  must  subject  his  personal  ideas  and  fancies 
to  the  will  and  wishes  and  needs  of  others.  He  is  taught 
that  his  religion  is  not  merely  an  individual  but  also  a 
social  obligation. 


PRIESTS  AND  PROPHETS 

ISAIAH  Ixi.,  i,  2:  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  God  is  upon  me; 
because  the  Lord  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  good  tidings 
unto  the  meek;  he  hath  sent  me  to  bind  up  the  broken- 
hearted, to  proclaim  liberty  to  the  captives,  and  the  opening 
of  the  prison  to  them  that  are  bound;  to  proclaim  the  ac- 
ceptable year  of  the  Lord. 

THE  second  portion  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  contains 
the  gospel  of  life  and  salvation  to  a  nation  sick  of 
sin,  enslaved,  heart-broken.  The  first  fifteen  chapters 
are  a  carol  of  glad  tidings,  a  promise  of  release,  a  proph- 
ecy of  the  joy  and  gladness  which  God  has  prepared  for 
the  people  whom  He  has  redeemed.  Cyrus  had  over- 
thrown the  power  of  Babylon  and  set  its  captives 
free. 

But,  after  all,  not  many  of  them  went  back  to  Jeru- 
salem, and  those  who  did  found  the  greater  part  of  the 
land  which  had  belonged  to  their  fathers  occupied  by 
the  Edomites,  the  rest  largely  a  wilderness,  the  ancient 
cities  ruin  heaps,  Jerusalem  a  desolation.  The  prosper- 
ity which  they  had  expected  did  not  come.  There  was 
no  great  interference  of  God,  so  far  as  they  could  see,  to 
bring  back  the  captives  from  the  ends  of  the  world;  and 
among  the  Edomites  and  Ammonites,  the  Arabians  and 
Samaritans  they  were  but  a  poor  and  puny  folk.  To 
these  men,  and  from  them  to  Israel  everywhere  and  to 

137 


138  Modern  Christianity 

the  world  at  large,  were  spoken  the  last  eleven  chapters 
of  our  book  of  Isaiah.  The  writer  of  the  passage  which 
I  have  taken  as  my  text  speaks  these  words  of  hope  out 
of  and  for  that  poor,  insignificant  folk  which  had  settled 
itself  in  the  ruins  of  ancient  Judah  after  the  exile: 
"The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  God  is  upon  me";  and  this  is 
the  proof  that  it  is  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord,  because  my 
message  is  good  tidings  to  the  poor,  the  weak,  the  miser- 
able, because  I  am  sent  to  bind  up  broken  hearts,  to 
preach  liberty  to  those  that  are  enslaved,  the  opening 
of  the  prison  doors  "  to  them  that  are  bound ;  to  pro- 
claim the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord." 

When  Jesus,  returning  to  his  home-town,  Nazareth, 
was  called  upon  by  the  rulers  of  the  synagogue  to  con- 
duct the  services,  He  made  these  words,  a  part  of  the 
second  lesson  for  that  day,  the  text  of  His  sermon,  say- 
ing to  His  hearers  and  fellow  townsmen:  "This  day  is 
this  scripture  fulfilled  in  your  ears."  He  adopted  this 
passage  as  a  proclamation  of  His  own  mission. 

The  condition  of  the  Jews  in  His  day  was  very  differ- 
ent from  their  condition  at  the  time  when  the  old  proph- 
et wrote  this  passage.  Galilee  was  rich  and  densely 
settled,  as  it  had  never  been  before  nor  has  been  since. 
Jerusalem  and  Judaea  flourished,  so  far  as  material 
wealth  was  concerned,  beyond  the  fondest  dreams  of 
former  generations.  The  Jews  throughout  the  world 
were,  on  the  whole,  rich  and  prosperous.  They  were  the 
money  power  in  the  Roman  Empire  and  in  the  Parthian 
Empire  alike.  In  general  they  enjoyed  religious  freedom, 
and  in  Judaea  and  Galilee  the  government,  so  far  as  they 
themselves  were  concerned,  was  practically  in  their  own 
hands.  Only  they  did  not  have  political  independence 


Priests  and  Prophets  139 

to  establish  a  theocratic  kingdom,  and  this  they  expected 
the  Messiah  to  bring. 

Jesus,  who  claimed  to  be  that  Messiah,  takes  as  the 
expression  of  His  mission  these  words,  preached  in  and 
for  this  people  when  it  was  down-trodden,  broken- 
hearted, enslaved.  He  makes  no  apparent  effort  to 
free  them  from  their  foreign  overlords.  He  applies  these 
words  no  longer  to  the  Jew  oppressed  and  enslaved  by 
the  outside  heathen,  but  to  the  poor  Jew,  down-trodden 
and  practically  enslaved  by  his  richer  fellow  Jews. 
Prosperous  and  well-to-do  as  the  bulk  of  the  nation  was, 
there  were  among  them  only  too  many  poor  and  needy, 
sick  in  body  and  sorrowing  in  soul.  The  very  prosperity 
of  the  prosperous  had  been  the  means  of  practically  en- 
slaving and  oppressing  a  large  part  of  the  community 
which  did  not  share  the  opulence  and  the  comfort  of  the 
privileged  and  dominant  classes.  Their  religion,  also, 
had  become  a  class  religion  and  a  law  religion,  concern- 
ing itself  primarily  not  with  the  weightier  matter  of  love 
of  their  neighbours,  but  with  the  fulfilment  of  minute 
details  of  ritual  and  the  correct  expression  of  doctrine. 
Jesus  became  the  friend  and  Saviour  of  all  who  were 
poor,  down-trodden,  or  in  any  need  among  His  people. 
His  was  a  mission  of  love  to  the  captives  of  society,  to 
the  broken-hearted  who  had  found  no  joy  but  only  mis- 
ery in  life,  to  the  forgotten  wretches  who  toiled  in  the 
prison  houses  of  their  huts  and  shops  for  the  barest  and 
most  miserable  subsistence,  without  freedom  and  with- 
out happiness.  He  preached  good  tidings  to  the  unsuc- 
cessful, the  unfortunate,  the  miserable,  good  tidings  of 
hope  and  salvation,  "the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord." 
He  lived  in  and  for  these  people,  giving  himself  for  them, 


140  Modern  Christianity 

suffering  with  their  sufferings,  sorrowing  with  their  sor- 
rows, poor  in  their  poverty,  seeking  to  heal  them  in  soul 
and  mind  and  body  by  the  out-pouring  of  a  divine  love. 
In  preaching  this  gospel  and  living  this  life,  He  came  in- 
to conflict  with  the  orthodoxy  of  the  religion  of  His  day 
and  the  respectability  of  its  society.  His  church  and 
His  people  put  Him  to  death  as  a  revolutionist,  as  one 
who,  in  their  judgment,  threatened  the  very  founda- 
tions of  religion  and  society.  To  them  He  seemed  to 
aim  at  the  destruction  of  the  social  order  and  the  per- 
version of  the  ancestral  faith.  In  fact  He  strove  to  con- 
struct a  society  which  should  realise  that  idea  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  proclaimed  by  the  prophet  of  old,  where 
there  should  be  no  broken-hearted,  no  prisoners,  no 
slaves,  none  poor,  wretched,  and  down-trodden.  This 
was  his  conception  of  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord, 
which  could  be  realised  only  as  men  substituted  in  their 
dealings  with  one  another  love  for  law,  service  to  the 
needs  of  others  for  exploitation  of  those  needs  for  their 
own  profit. 

The  Christian  Church  and  especially  the  Christian 
ministry  must  proclaim  the  same  message  to  the  men 
of  to-day.  So  surely  as  there  is  an  anointing  of  the 
Spirit  of  the  Lord  God,  it  is  an  anointing  for  this  same 
purpose:  to  heal  the  sick,  to  free  the  captives,  to  loose 
them  that  are  bound, — to  protest  against  those  condi- 
tions of  life,  too  often  sanctioned  by  usage  or  religion, 
which  produce  this  enslavement  and  this  misery.  The 
mission  of  the  Church  is  not  to  those  who  have,  who  are 
prosperous,  content,  self-satisfied  with  their  faith  and 
with  their  works  alike,  except  insofar  as  it  addresses  to 
them  words  of  warning;  as  it  bids  them,  in  the  words 


Priests  and  Prophets  14  * 

of  Christ,  to  sell  all  they  have  and  give  it  to  the  poor. 
The  mission  of  the  Church  and  its  ministry  is  a  message 
of  glad  tidings  to  those  who  have  not, — to  those  who 
have  failed  in  the  struggle  of  life,  who  are  unfortunate, 
wretched,  sinful —  to  seek  to  make  them  sharers  in  the 
joy  and  the  happiness  of  life. 

When  the  Christian  Church  started,  it  was  in  its  gen- 
eral conditions  like  the  Jewish  state  to  which  the  old 
prophet  first  addressed  the  words  of  my  text.  There 
were  in  it  none  but  the  poor  and  the  broken-hearted  and 
the  captives  and  the  bondmen.  In  Ephesus,  in  Corinth, 
in  Rome  it  was  the  religion  of  the  slaves  and  the  f  reed- 
men,  of  the  widows  and  the  poor  artisans.  It  was  the 
religion  of  the  slums  and  of  the  work  shops.  And  the 
one  principle  of  this  religion  was  love, — love  toward  God 
displayed  in  loving-kindness  toward  their  fellow-men. 
It  was  the  need  of  each  appealing  to  the  other,  calling 
forth  the  best  and  highest  in  their  natures,  that  en- 
nobled and  lifted  up  these  poor,  ignorant  men  until  the 
glory  of  their  lives  filled  the  world  with  wonder.  Then 
the  higher  circles  of  society  were  touched;  and  at  last 
the  state  itself  became  Christian, — and  then  something 
happened  like  that  which  had  happened  among  the  Jews. 
Religion  began  to  crystallise  into  form  and  dogma. 
The  religion  of  a  man  came  to  be  accounted  of,  not  by 
the  evidence  in  his  words  and  acts  of  the  Spirit  of  God 
dwelling  in  him,  and  inspiring  him  to  live  the  life  of 
Christ,  but  by  his  professions  of  belief  and  his  methods 
of  worship.  The  Church  built  splendid  temples  and  de- 
veloped a  gorgeous  ritual,  its  bishops  became  princes 
and  its  monks  wrote  theological  treatises  on  the  nature 
and  attributes  of  the  angels. 


142  Modern  Christianity 

But  through  all  the  history  of  the  Church,  wherever 
men  have  been  touched  with  the  spirit  of  divine  love, 
wherever  they  have  sought  in  literal  fact  to  live  the 
life  of  Christ,  wherever  their  hearts  have  throbbed  in 
sympathy  with  the  poor  and  the  broken-hearted  and 
the  captive  and  the  bondmen,  there  you  will  find  a 
certain  rebellion  against  these  forms  and  these  expres- 
sions of  doctrine. 

Mission  work  is  apt  to  be  wonderfully  broadening  in 
its  influence  upon  the  man  who  undertakes  it.  I  have 
often  told,  because  it  was  to  me  so  rich  in  meaning,  my 
experience  with  a  certain  Roman  Catholic  missionary 
at  Madeba  beyond  Jordan.  A  man  of  intense  zeal  for 
the  Master,  a  man  of  most  self-sacrificing  devotion  to 
the  Church  of  Christ;  well-to-do  in  this  world's  goods 
he  sold  all  he  had  and  gave  it  to  the  poor.  For  a  time 
he  conceived  that  he  could  best  serve  God  in  that  most 
ascetic  of  all  monastic  service  in  the  Roman  Church,  the 
service  of  the  Trappist  monks.  But  this  did  not  satisfy 
him.  At  last  he  went  out  as  a  missionary.  When  I  first 
met  him  he  had  done  great  things  among  the  wild  Arabs, 
with  whom  he  lived  entirely  alone,  only  seeing  a  white  face 
once  or  twice  in  a  year,  as  some  curious  traveller  reached 
those  outlying  regions.  That  I  might  not  interfere  with 
his  work  by  exhibiting  to  the  people  for  whom  he  la- 
boured the  divisions  in  Christianity,  I  asked  whether  and 
how  I  might  be  partaker  in  the  Mass.  He  threw  his  arms 
about  my  neck  and  told  me  that,  however  differences  of 
doctrine  and  practice  might  separate  us  at  home,  there, 
in  the  face  of  the  misery  and  need,  the  ignorance  and 
degradation  of  that  heathenism,  he  knew  no  difference 
between  us  who  professed  the  name  of  Christ  and  His 


Priests  and  Prophets  143 

love.  He  counted  himself  and  me  as  true  brothers  and 
fellow-workers  in  Christ.  The  man  who  has  entered 
into  a  real  communion  with  Christ  in  his  service  to  men 
must  have  in  him  something  of  that  spirit  which  enabled 
Jesus  to  share  with  His  people  in  religious  ceremonies 
and  religious  expressions  which  seem  to  you  and  me  to- 
day so  strangely  alien  to  His  own  teaching.  He  was 
circumcised,  He  was  obedient  to  the  Law,  as  the  re- 
ligion of  His  people,  He  joined  in  the  bloody  sacrifices 
of  the  temple,  He  used  formulae  and  prayers  which  seem 
to  us  to-day  redolent  of  strange  and  foolish  supersti- 
tions, because  He  entered  into  the  real  spirit  which  lay 
behind  it  all.  He  was  one  in  spirit  with  him  whosoever 
sought  to  serve  God,  and  He  was  one  in  spirit  with  him 
whosoever  had  need  of  the  love  and  the  help  of  God. 

Doctrines  and  ceremonies  are  not  to  be  minimised. 
They  have  their  place  and  their  use;  but  they  are  value- 
less and  worse  than  valueless  unless  the  man  who  uses 
them  feels  through  them  and  behind  them  the  Spirit  of 
God  and  His  love. 

There  are  three  parts  in  religion.  First,  there  is  the  part 
of  authority:  you  accept  practices  and  professions  of 
faith  because  they  are  taught  you  by  those  whom  you 
respect  and  reverence,  because  they  are  laid  down  by 
the  Church ;  but  so  long  as  your  religion  remains  on  that 
plane  and  that  plane  only,  its  value  is  not  great.  Sec- 
ondly, there  is  the  part  of  reason :  that  which  has  been 
accepted  on  authority  is  questioned  and  examined  and 
the  effort  is  made  to  apply  to  it  the  tests  of  reason.  It 
is  good  for  men  to  do  this,  even  though  at  times  it  re- 
sults in  the  abandonment  of  that  which  has  been  ac- 
cepted on  authority;  but  indeed  no  authority  which  is 


144  Modern  Christianity 

not  in  some  way  in  tact  with  the  reason  of  man  can  in 
the  long  run  sustain  its  position.  This  questioning  of 
authority  by  reason  is,  of  course,  more  prevalent  among 
the  educated  and  the  thoughtful.  The  thinking  man, 
and  especially  the  man  who  is  thinking  of  preaching  the 
Gospel,  is  apt  to  come  to  a  stage  where  his  thinking 
clashes  or  seems  to  clash  with  the  doctrines  of  the  Church, 
as  they  have  come  to  him  through  authority.  It  is  good 
for  a  man  to  come  to  this  stage  and  to  have  to  think  the 
thing  out.  It  is  bad  for  a  man,  when  he  comes  to  this 
stage,  if  he  have  not  previously  acquired  some  of  that 
spirit  of  obedience,  that  spirit  of  un-egotism,  if  I  may 
so  speak,  which,  with  all  due  confidence  in  itself,  yet 
respects  and  regards  the  experience  and  the  opinion  of 
others. 

But  there  is  also  a  third  part  in  religion.  The  mental 
processes  will  never  give  satisfactory  results  unless  a 
man  enter  also  into  a  spiritual  experience,  unless  he  be 
anointed  with  the  Spirit  of  God.  There  is  a  soul  sense 
in  us  which  is  not  mind.  It  is  that  by  which  I  know 
you  and  you  know  me.  No  reasoning  gives  me  your 
love  or  gives  you  my  love,  no  reasoning  shows  me  your 
soul  or  shows  you  my  soul.  There  is  a  something  else 
by  which  soul  speaks  to  soul,  and  there  is  something  be- 
yond reason  by  which  man  enters  into  a  genuine  relation 
with  God,  feels  the  presence  of  God,  accepts  the  law  of 
love  as  the  law  of  his  life.  That  spiritual  something  does 
not  supplant  reason,  it  does  not  supplant  authority. 
Authority  has  its  place,  reason  has  its  place.  But  be- 
hind and  above  these  is  the  Spirit,  which  makes  religion 
a  new  and  different  thing,  higher,  deeper,  broader.  No 
one  can  truly  preach  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  until 


Priests  and  Prophets  145 

he  has  entered  into  that  spiritual  union  with  God,  and 
been  anointed  with  the  Spirit  of  love  to  preach  good 
tidings  to  the  poor. 

Now  there  have  been  ages  when  the  Church  as  a  body 
has  seemed  to  be  lacking  in  this  anointing  of  the  Spirit, 
and,  because  it  was  lacking  in  it,  therefore  it  sought  to 
hedge  around  its  faith.  It  was  timid  and  fearful  lest 
men  should  not  believe.  It  built  up  great  fences  of  con- 
fessions of  faith  and  articles  of  belief  and  exacted  of  men 
oaths  of  allegiance  to  all  the  doctrines  contained  in  these 
things.  And  in  doing  so  it  got  very  far  away  from  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  spirit  and  the  creeds  of 
the  early  Church.  So,  in  a  somewhat  similar  manner, 
as  it  lost  the  personal  sense  of  the  divine  presence,  it 
attempted  to  represent  that  presence  by  ever  greater 
pomp  of  forms.  Forms  there  must  be,  creeds  there 
must  be,  so  long  as  we  are  materialised  in  these  outward 
bodies;  for  we  must  communicate  with  one  another. 
We  must  find  some  form  of  words  to  express  our  com- 
mon thought,  certain  outward  acts  must  symbolise  for 
all  alike  the  inward  and  spiritual  truth.  You  will  re- 
member that  when,  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  Church's 
organisation,  Philip  baptised  the  eunuch,  there  was 
what  you  may  call  a  catechism  and  a  creed.  Philip  was 
willing  to  baptise  the  eunuch  if  he  believed  with  all  his 
heart.  This  catechism  of  Philip  the  eunuch  satisfied  by 
his  expression  of  faith  in  Jesus  Christ  as  the  Son  of  God. 
The  real  faith  of  the  Christian  is,  after  all,  a  very  simple 
one,  and  it  is  to  be  guarded  not  so  much  by  the  develop- 
ment of  complex  forms  of  words  as  by  demanding 
an  expression  of  that  faith  in  character  and  life.  The 
heresies  which  the  Church  has  to  fear  are  rather  heresies 


146  Modern  Christianity 

of  life  than  heresies  of  doctrine, — the  heresies  of  selfish- 
ness, and  worldliness,  and  unspirituality. 

When  a  man  feels  upon  him  the  anointing  of  the  Spirit 
of  God,  and  his  heart  burns  with  love  for  those  who 
are  poor  and  sick  and  enslaved, — it  is  not  that  he  wants 
to  cast  away  creeds,  but  behind  them  he  sees  and  feels 
the  greater  something  which  they  symbolise.  He  sees 
Jesus  Christ,  the  expression  of  God  in  man.  The  Incar- 
nation thrills  and  throbs  with  a  new  meaning;  he  has 
found  the  divine  in  man,  he  has  found  it  in  these  poor, 
wretched  failures  of  men,  and  it  has  revealed  to  him 
glorious  possibilities  for  them  also.  He  feels  the  touch 
of  kinship  with  them.  In  proportion  as  a  man  says  the 
Creed  with  this  deeper  faith  is  he  apt  to  be  more  tolerant 
of  the  difference  of  views  of  other  men  with  regard 
to  the  words  of  that  Creed.  The  thing  behind  has  be- 
come so  great,  so  wonderful,  the  spiritual  life  has  be- 
come so  real  that  the  outward  and  material  loses  part  of 
its  value.  Now  this  may  of  course  be  carried  too  far. 
It  may  develop  into  anti-nomianism,  but  in  general  the 
difficulty  of  the  Church  has  been  not  anti-nomianism 
but  over-strictness  of  doctrinal  interpretation. 

Of  these  things  I  have  spoken  because,  in  the  opinion 
of  some,  there  is  a  mental  and  spiritual  crisis  in  the 
Church  at  the  present  time.  I  think  they  are  mistaken. 
There  is,  I  believe,  a  spiritual  awakening  in  the  Church, 
and  every  spiritual  awakening  will  show  itself  in  what 
seem  like  revolutionary  and  even  destructive  move- 
ments. Just  as  Jesus  seemed  to  the  Jews  of  His  own 
time  a  menace  to  Church  and  State,  so  any  spiritual 
movement  in  its  degree  is  apt  to  seem  to  the  established 
authorities  of  Church  and  State  revolutionary  and  de- 


Priests  and  Prophets  147 

structive.  It  is  not  possible  for  the  ordinary  man,  in  a 
period  of  mental  or  spiritual  movement,  to  foresee  pre- 
cisely the  outcome  of  that  movement.  But  you  and  I, 
who  believe  in  God,  have  no  right  ever  to  be  timid  or 
fearful  about  the  outcome  of  any  movement.  That  is 
the  part  of  the  unbeliever,  not  of  the  believer.  So  far 
as  the  experience  of  men  goes,  and  so  far  as  the  personal 
experience  which  I  have  made  in  my  own  life  goes,  the 
results  of  all  movements  which  seek  to  give  expression 
to  reason  or  the  spirit  are  in  the  end  constructive,  how- 
ever mistaken  their  formulae  and  their  shibboleths  may 
be.  They  do  not  subvert,  but  only  enlarge  and  deepen 
the  faith.  Often-times  such  movements,  themselves 
heretical  doctrinally,  bring  out  the  inward  truth  which 
the  Church  has  tended  to  lose  or  obscure  by  devoting 
itself  too  exclusively  to  the  outward  expression. 

Remember  always  that  the  fundamental  thing  is  the 
life,  the  character.  The  test  of  the  reality  of  the  belief 
of  the  Church,  as  of  the  individual,  lies  in  that.  The 
presence  or  absence  of  the  Spirit  of  God  in  the  Church 
is  indicated  by  the  fulfilment  or  lack  of  fulfilment  of  its 
mission — "  to  preach  good  tidings  unto  the  poor;  *  *  *  to 
bind  up  the  brokenhearted,  to  proclaim  liberty  to  the 
captives,  and  the  opening  of  the  prison  to  them  that 
are  bound;  to  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the 
Lord." 

We  have  three  orders  in  the  ministry  of  our  Church 
— Deacons,  Priests,  and  Bishops.  If  you  will  stop  a 
moment  to  consider  the  origin  and  the  function  of  dea- 
cons and  priests  you  will  observe  that  they  are  symbolic 
of  the  attitude  of  the  whole  Church.  The  word  Deacon 
means  service.  The  Church  found  itself  at  the  very 


148  Modern  Christianity 

outset  compelled  to  serve  not  alone  the  souls  of  men, 
but  their  bodies  also,  and  when  murmurings  arose 
because  the  Apostles  did  not  perform  this  function  satis- 
factorily, the  Apostles  reserved  for  themselves  the  dia- 
conate  or  ministry  of  the  word,  and  assigned  to  seven 
men  set  apart  for  that  purpose  the  diaconate  or  ministry 
of  alms,  the  care  for  the  bodily  needs.  The  same  word 
is  used  in  the  Greek  for  both  services,  but  the  name 
Deacon  was  applied  only  to  those  who  were  set  apart 
to  service  for  the  bodily  needs.  (In  point  of  fact  it  is 
impracticable  to  keep  the  bodily  and  the  spiritual  needs 
so  dissociated,  and  within  a  very  short  time  you  find  the 
men  who  were  set  apart  to  serve  as  deacons  for  the  ad- 
ministration of  alms  engaged  also  in  that  other  diaco- 
nate, the  spiritual  service  or  ministry.)  Now,  in  setting 
aside  those  deacons  for  a  diaconate  or  service,  the 
Church  was  merely  recognising  its  own  obligation  of 
service.  No  Christian  man  is  free  from  that  obligation 
of  ministry,  of  diaconate,  in  his  own  person  to  those  who 
have  need;  but  for  the  organised  Christian  body  there 
is  necessity  further  of  representatives  who  shall  take  the 
charge  of  that  service  in  its  larger  aspects  for  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole.  The  Diaconate,  therefore,  is  sym- 
bolic of  the  obligation  of  the  Church  to  proclaim  by 
deeds  of  love  and  mercy  good  tidings  to  the  poor  and 
needy. 

Similarly,  the  Priesthood  is  symbolic.  As  the  Church 
is  the  body  of  Christ,  so  it  must  express  Him  in  the 
world.  Like  Him  it  must  sacrifice,  and  the  sacrifice 
which  it  must  make  is  the  sacrifice  of  itself.  And  as  sac- 
rifice is  the  function  of  the  Church,  which  is  the  body  of 
Christ,  so  it  is  the  function  of  each  individual  member 


Priests  and  Prophets  149 

of  that  Church  to  offer  himself,  his  soul  and  body  as  "a 
reasonable,  holy,  and  living  sacrifice."  As  the  Son  of  God 
came  down  from  heaven  and  was  incarnate  in  man  that 
He  might  save  man,  so  each  follower  of  Christ  must 
descend,  as  it  were,  from  the  heaven  of  his  own  success, 
his  own  prosperity,  his  own  comfort,  and  enter  into  the 
need  and  the  suffering  and  the  misery  of  those  who  have 
not,  of  those  who  have  failed,  of  those  who  are  discon- 
tented, of  those  who  are  sick  in  body  and  in  soul,  that 
he  may  save  them.  He  who,  having  talent,  having  place, 
having  knowledge,  having  success,  having  prosperity, 
having  comfort,  conceives  of  it  as  a  thing  in  which  he 
may  rest  content,  has  failed  to  grasp  the  foundation  prin- 
ciple of  Christianity.  He  does  not  know  Jesus  Christ. 
This  conception  of  sacrifice  the  Church  holds  continu- 
ally before  its  members  in  that  service  which  you  may 
call  the  Mysteries  of  Christianity,  the  service  of  the 
Holy  Communion.  So  holy  and  peculiar  does  it  count 
this  service  that  it  allows  only  those  especially  prepared 
and  trained,  whose  characters  have  undergone  the 
closest  scrutiny,  to  administer  those  mysteries.  These 
men  are  in  a  special  sense  its  priests,  who  represent 
in  this  service  the  congregation,  and  whose  offering  of 
the  sacrifice  of  Christ  is  symbolic  of  the  offering  of 
itself  in  service  and  sacrifice  by  the  Church.  But  these 
men  are  priests  in  the  truest  sense,  not  because  they  ad- 
minister those  outward  emblems  of  infinite  love,  but 
because  they  enter  into  such  a  union  with  Christ  that 
they  join  with  Him  in  His  sacrifice;  and  that  also  is 
symbolic  of  the  Church. 

But  our  priesthood  has  also  another  function.  The 
earliest  function  of  the  Jewish    priesthood   was   the 


150  Modern  Christianity 

interpretation  of  the  oracles  of  God,  rather  than  the 
offering  of  sacrifice.  At  a  later  date  this  function  was 
left  largely  to  the  prophets,  and  the  priests  became 
almost  exclusively  sacrificers  for  the  people.  Jesus 
united  the  two  functions  of  the  ancient  priesthood 
once  more  in  His  own  person  as  priest  and  prophet, 
and  His  followers  in  the  official  ministry  of  the  Church, 
the  priesthood  of  the  Christian  Church,  are  expected 
to  do  the  same.  It  is  their  function  to  interpret  the 
oracles  of  God. 

There  has  been  too  often  in  the  past  a  so-called  con- 
flict between  science  and  the  Church,  which,  so  far  as 
the  Church  was  concerned,  arose  from  the  fact  that 
some  priests  were  not  progressive,  open-minded,  eager 
to  learn  more  about  God  as  He  reveals  Himself  in  His 
universe.  Going  back  over  the  ages  that  are  past,  one 
is  reminded  of  the  opposition  which  Galileo  met  with, 
the  treatment  of  the  Copernican  theory,  and,  in  more 
recent  times,  the  outcry  against  Darwin  and  the  theory 
of  evolution. 

It  is  not  possible  for  every  priest  of  the  Church  to  be 
familiar  with  all  fields  of  science,  if  with  any.  Some 
priests  may  find  time  to  devote  themselves  as  a  mental 
recreation  to  the  study  of  some  branch  of  science,  but 
whether  they  do  so  or  not  it  does  lie  within  the  province 
of  the  priesthood  to  learn  from  specialists  in  scientific 
study  the  results  of  their  work,  and  to  breathe  into  those 
results  that  spiritual  something  which  it  is  the  peculiar 
province  of  the  priesthood  to  give  to  all  knowledge. 
Indeed,  that  is  our  work  in  interpreting  the  oracles  of 
God,  not  that  in  the  field  of  science  we  should  be  the 
explorers,  but  that,  receiving  the  approved  truths  of 


Priests  and  Prophets  15* 

science,  we   should  invest  them  with  spiritual  signifi- 
cance, making  them  live  in  the  realm  of  God. 

Now  and  then  you  hear  it  said  that  science  is  God- 
less, that  science  takes  men  away  from  God.  In  the 
long  run  science  brings  men  to  God.  The  great  difficulty 
has  been  that  misguided  men,  speaking  with  some  show 
of  authority  in  the  name  of  God,  have  at  various  times 
opposed  the  study  of  science,  or  condemned  the  scien- 
tists for  their  results,  as  though  they  were  responsible  for 
the  truths  which  they  discovered.  The  position  which  a 
priest  should  take,  as  interpreter  of  the  oracles  of  God, 
is  that  truth  is  divine,  unfettered,  unhampered.  Men 
must  be  urged  to  search  for  it.  All  truth  is  of  God  and 
all  truth  is  one  truth.  Whoever  seeks  and  finds  truth 
has  found  and  revealed  to  man  something  more  of  God. 

The  scientific  discoverer  of  truth  sometimes  so  pre- 
sents that  truth  that  it  seems  to  be  antagonistic  to  faith. 
It  is  here  that  the  priest  must  especially  be  the  inter- 
preter of  the  oracles  of  God;  he  must  take  that  truth 
and  put  it  in  its  proper  place  in  connection  with  the  faith. 
It  is  his  duty  to  lead  his  people  on,  to  expound  the  new 
discoveries  that  are  made  as  new  revelations  of  God;  to 
find  in  them  applications  of  the  great  principles  of  God's 
love,  and  mercy,  and  justice,  and  truth;  and  to  show 
men  that  these  new  things  are  not  contrary  to  God,  but 
a  further  revelation  of  God  to  man  in  accordance  with 
the  eternal  principles  of  our  faith. 

We  shall  make  our  faith  a  false  faith  if  we  do  not  so 
believe  and  practise.  Timidity,  dread  of  the  discoveries 
of  science,  uneasiness  in  view  of  the  search  after  truth, 
of  God's  law  in  nature,  is  an  evidence  of  a  certain  lack  of 
faith,  a  certain  fear  that  in  some  way  or  another  the 


152  Modern  Christianity 

things  which  we  hold  may  not  be  true.  The  priest  who 
has  such  timidity  is  hampered  in  the  most  dangerous 
way  in  interpreting  God  to  man.  He  is  hampered  by 
lack  of  faith,  lack  of  faith  in  the  eternal  truth,  of  faith  in 
the  unchangeable  God  who  cannot  contradict  Himself, 
who  cannot  reveal  one  truth  at  one  time  and  another 
at  another,  of  faith  in  the  infinite  God,  who  is  all  in  all. 


FREE  CHURCH 

DEUTERONOMY  xvi.,  16,  17:  They  shall  not  appear  before 
the  Lord  empty ;  Every  man  shall  give  as  he  is  able,  according 
to  the  blessing  of  the  Lord  thy  God  which  he  hath  given 
thee. 

THESE  words  occur  in  the  prescriptions  of  the 
Book  of  Deuteronomy  with  reference  to  the  three 
great  pilgrim  feasts  of  the  Jewish  year,  at  which 
all  Jews  were  ordered  to  visit  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem. 
No  one  was  to  appear  before  the  great  King  of  Israel 
empty.  As  it  was  the  custom  of  men  in  coming  before 
earthly  kings  to  present  gifts,  so,  when  they  came  be- 
fore the  King  of  kings,  they  were  to  present  gifts,  each 
according  to  his  ability,  according  to  the  blessing  which 
God  had  given  him. 

Now,  our  theory  of  the  relation  of  man  to  God  is  that 
there  is  no  distinction  of  persons.  God  accepts  rich  and 
poor  alike.  The  small  gift  of  the  poor  man,  if  only  it  be 
honestly  given,  according  to  his  ability,  is  as  acceptable 
to  Him  as  the  manifold  greater  gift  of  the  rich  man. 
What  God  considers  is  not  the  gift,  but  its  meaning  to 
the  man  who  makes  it.  He  to  whom  belong  the  cattle 
upon  a  thousand  hills  needs  no  offerings  of  bulls  and 
goats ;  what  He  wishes  is  the  offering  of  the  heart  of  the 
offerer.  A  true  gift  of  love,  which  involves  sacrifice,  al- 
though utterly  insignificant  in  intrinsic  value,  is  vastly 

153 


1 54  Modern  Christianity 

more  precious  in  the  sight  of  God  than  the  gift  of 
thousands  of  dollars  which  involves  no  sacrifice,  no  fore- 
thought, no  care  and  concern  of  love.  Our  Lord  empha- 
sised this  most  emphatically  when  His  disciples  called 
His  attention  to  the  beauty  and  magnificence  of  the 
Temple  at  Jerusalem,  as  something  particularly  accept- 
able to  God,  because  it  represented  so  much  money, 
by  pointing  out  a  poor  widow  woman  who  was  casting 
a  couple  of  farthings  into  the  treasury  of  the  Temple, 
and  declaring  that  her  gift  was  more  precious  in  the 
sight  of  God  than  the  millions  given  by  rich  men  and 
women  to  adorn  and  beautify  the  Temple  and  make 
glad  its  service,  because  it  was  her  all,  theirs  but  a 
small  part  of  their  all. 

The  same  theory  which  we  hold  in  regard  to  the  rela- 
tion between  God  and  men  in  the  matter  of  gifts,  we 
hold  also  as  to  the  relation  of  man  to  man  in  the  King- 
dom of  God  and  the  House  of  God.  We  declare  that 
in  the  Kingdom  of  God  factitious  distinctions  of  wealth 
and  rank  do  not  exist,  that  what  God  considers  is  the 
man,  so  that  in  His  Kingdom  men  hold  their  rank  ac- 
cording to  their  spiritual  character,  the  humble  and  low- 
ly receiving  the  places  of  distinction,  and  the  haughty 
and  self-consequent  the  lowly  places,  if  indeed  any  place 
at  all  be  allotted  them.  The  House  of  God  we  seek  to 
make  so  far  like  the  Kingdom  of  God,  that  while  we  do 
not  undertake  to  pass  judgment — which  belongs  only  to 
God — upon  the  relative  rank  and  worth  of  worshippers, 
we  nevertheless  refuse  to  admit  worldly  distinctions 
there.  We  claim  that  worldly  position  should  have  no 
weight  whatsoever  in  Church  arrangements.  But  from 
the  earliest  time  there  has  been  difficulty  in  carrying 


Free  Church  155 

this  theory  into  practice.  The  writer  of  the  Epistle  of 
James  complains  that  in  his  day,  at  the  very  beginnings 
of  the  Church,  men  allowed  their  spiritual  ideas  to  be- 
come confused  with  their  material  customs,  so  that  even 
in  the  House  of  God  they  would  lead  the  man  of  means, 
who  wore  the  handsome  robe  and  the  costly  ring,  and 
from  whom  great  contributions  might  be  expected,  to 
the  place  of  honour,  while  the  man  shabbily  dressed,  and 
presumably  with  empty  purse,  was  placed  in  an  inferior 
position,  far  removed  from  what  we  should  call  the 
chancel  end  of  the  church.  The  Christians  of  those 
days  were,  almost  without  exception,  poor,  and  it  was 
difficult  for  them  to  avoid  being  dazzled  by  wealth  and 
rank. 

You  will  find  the  same  conditions  prevailing  to-day, 
and  in  the  poorest  congregations  almost  more  pronounc- 
edly than  in  the  richest.  I  remember  well  a  congre- 
gation of  poor  negroes  in  a  certain  New  England  city, 
where  I  was  a  student,  whose  attitude  in  this  matter 
was  a  subject  of  constant  jest.  If  a  well  dressed  white 
man  went  to  their  service,  a  place  of  honour  was  at  once 
assigned  him,  and  even  license  and  impropriety  of  con- 
duct were  overlooked,  if  made  good  by  a  contribution 
which,  to  those  poor  folk,  seemed  munificent.  But 
should  a  poor  white  man  enter,  from  whom  nothing  was 
to  be  expected,  he  was  handled  with  rigour,  and  if  not 
positively  forbidden  admission,  yet  found  difficulty  in 
obtaining  any  place,  even  the  lowliest. 

Churches,  like  everything  else  in  this  world,  require 
some  sort  of  material  support,  and  we  are  in  danger  of 
calculating  the  prosperity  of  a  church,  not  by  the  num- 
ber of  souls  that  are  brought  to  Christ,  but  by  the 


156  Modern  Christianity 

amount  of  its  contributions,  the  splendour  of  its  edifice, 
the  eloquence  of  its  clergy,  and  the  magnificence  of  its 
music  and  its  services.  Lowell,  in  his  Vision  of  Sir 
Launfal,  tells  us  that  everything  in  this  world  has  its 
price,  even  the  graves  in  which  we  lie;  only  the  gifts  of 
God  are  priceless,  His  sunshine  and  His  rain  descending 
on  all  alike. 

"Earth  gets  its  price  for  what  earth  gives  us; 

The  beggar  is  taxed  for  a  corner  to  die  in, 
The  priest  hath  his  fee  who  comes  and  shrives  us, 

We  bargain  for  the  graves  we  lie  in; 
At  the  devil's  booth  are  all  things  sold, 
Each  ounce  of  dross  costs  its  ounce  of  gold; 
For  a  cap  and  bells  our  lives  we  pay, 

Bubbles  we  buy  with  a  whole  soul's  tasking; 
'T  is  heaven  alone  that  is  given  away, 

T  is  only  God  may  be  had  for  the  asking. 
No  price  is  set  on  the  lavish  summer; 
June  may  be  had  by  the  poorest  comer." 

But  in  practice  it  requires  money  to  enjoy  even  June, 
at  least  for  the  city  resident.  And  so  it  comes  to  pass 
that,  in  spite  of  all  our  theory  of  the  free  relation  of  God 
and  man,  of  the  freedom  of  the  Gospel  and  the  free-will 
character  of  the  gifts  of  man,  we  make  religion  also 
have  its  price. 

For  it  is  manifest  that  money  must  be  raised  to  con- 
duct religious  work  as  for  any  other  purpose.  Our  object 
should  be,  however,  so  to  raise  that  money  that  it  comes 
as  a  free-will  gift,  the  offering  of  love  of  believers.  Let 
those  who  love  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  prove  their  love  to 
Him,  as  they  prove  their  love  to  their  dear  ones  on  this 
earth,  by  their  offerings  of  love.  That  is  the  principle 
inculcated  by  the  text  which  I  have  taken  from  the  Old 


Free  Church  157 

Testament  Book  of  Deuteronomy.  Let  every  man  give 
as  he  is  able,  but  let  no  one  come  empty  into  the  pre- 
sence of  the  Lord. 

When,  in  course  of  time,  Church  and  State  came  to  be 
united,  the  Christian  Church-state  did  precisely  what 
the  Jewish  Church-state  had  done  before  it,  at  least  in 
the  later  period  of  its  existence,  namely,  it  undertook 
to  levy  a  tax  for  the  maintenance  of  religious  work. 
The  Church  undertook  to  support  itself  through  the 
State  by  the  same  means  which  were  employed  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  civil  establishment.  The  Jews  in 
the  latter  period  of  their  history  had  levied  a  per  capita 
tax  for  the  maintenance  of  the  Temple  worship ;  the 
Church  undertook  to  levy  similar  taxes,  and  all  through 
the  Middle  Ages  and,  in  fact,  down  to  the  beginning  of 
the  last  century,  such  a  relation  between  Church  and 
State  continued  to  prevail,  and  still  continues  to  prevail 
in  almost  every  country  except  our  own. 

In  this  country  the  withdrawal  of  State  aid  forced 
men  to  fall  back  on  the  system  of  free-will  offerings. 
The  ideas  of  individual  freedom  and  local  self  govern- 
ment, which  were  prevalent  in  State  affairs,  and  which 
had  been  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole  Revolutionary 
movement,  had  already  led  in  Church  matters  to 
a  congregational  development.  Congregations  were 
looked  on  as  the  unit,  and  it  became  the  duty  of  each 
congregation  to  organise  and  support  its  own  form  and 
place  of  worship.  This  had,  along  with  its  advantages, 
certain  disadvantages.  There  was  a  tendency  toward 
a  sort  of  club  development.  It  was  thought  that  if  the 
matter  of  support  were  left  entirely  to  free-will  offerings, 
each  one  being  told  to  give  as  he  was  able,  some  men, 


158  Modern  Christianity 

who  were  perfectly  well  able  to  give,  would  give  nothing, 
although  making  use  of  all  the  privileges  of  the  Church. 
It  seemed  to  people  used  to  the  ordinances  of  civil  law 
and  to  the  connection  between  Church  and  State  which 
had  existed  for  so  long  a  time,  that  some  sort  of  means 
must  be  found  to  coerce  people  into  bearing  their  share 
of  the  financial  burden.  It  was  a  matter  that  could  not 
be  left  to  them  and  God.  A  very  simple  way  of  prevent- 
ing men  from  shirking  seemed  to  be  to  say: "  You  cannot 
have  a  part  in  the  worship  and  ministry  of  this  church 
unless  you  pay  your  quota  toward  its  support.  There 
are  such  and  such  a  number  of  us  and  your  quota  is  so 
and  so  much."  Where  all  men  are  equal  in  their 
means  and  opportunities,  and  all  are  burdened  with  the 
same  obligations,  this  method  of  collecting  a  revenue 
for  the  support  of  the  Church  might  not  be  unjust,  and 
need  not,  in  itself,  exclude  any  from  equal  privileges. 
At  the  same  time,  even  in  that  case,  its  tendency  is  to  do 
away  with  the  essential  idea  of  a  gift  of  love  and  sub- 
stitute for  it,  under  ecclesiastical  law  and  sanctions,  a 
tax  system,  making  men  feel  that  they  have  done  their 
duty  when  they  have  simply  paid  a  certain  obligatory 
tax  into  the  church  treasury.  But,  in  reality,  men  are 
very  far  from  equal  in  means,  opportunities,  or  obliga- 
tions resting  upon  them,  and  anything  like  a  systematic 
enforcement  of  such  a  system,  especially  in  our  cities, 
is  bound  to  result  in  gross  inequalities  in  the  House  of 
God  and  in  the  substitution  of  a  material  for  a  spiritual 
standard  in  the  relations  of  men  to  the  privileges  of 
worship. 

The  pew  system,  which  was  originally  introduced,  I 
believe,  with  a  view  to  keeping  families  together,  lent 


Free  Church  159 

itself  readily  to  a  further  development  of  this  idea  of  a 
tax.  The  church  became  a  sort  of  club  house  or  a  grand 
opera  house,  if  I  may  be  permitted  without  irreverence 
to  use  that  term,  whose  seats  or  boxes  were  allotted  to 
the  annual  subscribers  according  to  the  amount  which 
each  was  able  to  pay.  If  you  will  go  over  the  religious 
history  of  this  city  during  the  last  century,  you  will  find 
that  in  the  thirties  there  were  churches  only  for  the  well- 
to-do.  Those  churches  were  of  the  nature  of  clubs  with 
graded  sittings.  There  was  no  missionary  life  whatso- 
ever in  the  Church.  In  fact,  all  spiritual  life  in  our 
Church  was  at  that  time  at  a  very  low  ebb.  Not  only 
were  there  no  missions  to  the  heathen,  but  the  poor  and 
foreign  population  of  this  city,  which  was  rapidly  in- 
creasing, was  absolutely  uncared  for. 

Some  of  the  spiritual  leaders  of  the  day  were  deeply 
moved  by  these  conditions,  and  an  organisation  was  es- 
tablished to  start  free  chapels  for  the  poor  and  neglected 
population  in  this  city.  The  movement  quickly  took 
root  and  spread,  until  it  came  to  be  looked  upon  as  the 
duty  of  each  rich  church  to  provide  a  chapel  with  free 
sittings  for  poor  people.  But  it  was  soon  found  that 
this  did  not  solve  the  problem.  The  rich  had  their  sit- 
tings in  handsome  churches  with  eloquent  preachers  and 
fine  music.  The  poor  were  provided,  at  the  expense  of 
the  rich,  with  chapels,  for  the  most  part  plain  and  simply 
severe,  not  to  say  ugly,  with  preachers  who  were  not 
considered  sufficiently  able  to  be  allowed  to  preach  in 
the  parish  church  at  all,  and  with  music  to  match,  if 
any  music  were  provided. 

A  certain  class  of  dependent  poor  were  reached 
through  these  chapels,  but  in  general,  although  there 


160  Modern  Christianity 

were  brilliant  exceptions,  this  method  proved  utterly 
inadequate.  The  poor  were  pauperised.  Their  religion 
was  given  to  them  cheap,  and  they  consequently  valued 
it  at  naught.  They  did  not  themselves  contribute  to  it, 
nor  had  they  any  voice  in  the  management  of  their 
chapels.  The  rich,  on  the  other  hand,  were  hardened  in 
their  selfish  isolation.  They  felt  that  when  the  chapel 
was  built  and  given  for  services  for  poor  people,  they 
had  done  their  part  and  might  rest  at  ease.  They  re- 
garded themselves  as  charitable  and  liberal  and  as  hav- 
ing fulfilled  almost  to  excess  the  law  of  God  in  giving  a 
chapel  to  the  poor;  of  deeds  of  personal  service,  of  giving 
their  hearts  to  these  people,  they  had  no  idea.  Nor  did 
they  realise  the  needs  or  character  of  the  poor  to  whom 
they  offered  places  in  these  chapels.  They  regarded 
them  as  ungrateful  because  they  did  not  go  flocking 
into  the  chapels,  and  as  mean  and  un-Christian  because 
they  did  not  contribute  to  their  support.  There  was  a 
complete  lack  of  sympathy  and,  consequently,  of  love 
and  service,  which  must  always  prevail  where  there  is 
isolation.  We  cannot  understand  the  needs  of  people, 
spiritual  or  otherwise,  without  coming  in  contact  with 
them.  Some  good  and  noble  men  and  women  went 
down  to  the  chapels  and  laboured  there  in  person,  but 
in  the  majority  of  cases  the  establishment  of  the  chapels 
resulted  in  a  more  complete  separation,  if  that  were 
possible,  between  rich  and  poor,  since  the  rich  felt  that 
now  there  was  no  excuse  whatsoever  for  the  poor  to 
come  into  their  churches. 

Then  began  the  free  church  movement,  started  by 
those  who  realised  that  what  was  necessary  was  to 
bring  rich  and  poor  together,  on  a  basis  of  equality,  in 


Free  Church  161 

the  House  of  God,  each  being  called  upon  to  con- 
tribute simply  what  he  was  able,  the  action  of  the 
individual  being  left  to  himself  and  God.  There  are 
now  a  considerable  number  of  independent  churches 
in  New  York  which  have  adopted  the  free  church 
system,  and  in  the  Church  at  large  it  has  secured  a 
permanent  hold,  so  that  in  some  dioceses  no  church 
can  be  consecrated  or  admitted  to  Convention  unless  it 
be  free.  Free  churches  have  also  exercised  a  remark- 
able influence  on  the  pewed  churches.  These  are  no 
longer  what  they  once  were.  There  is  a  missionary 
spirit  in  them,  and  in  most  of  them  there  are  more  or 
less  free  sittings  and  a  readiness  to  welcome  strangers 
and  outsiders  to  the  services  and  into  the  pews  without 
regard  to  dress  or  contributions.  At  the  same  time,  as 
long  as  the  idea  of  making  a  charge  for  a  sitting  pre- 
vails, there  must,  of  necessity,  be  distinctions  between 
rich  and  poor  in  the  House  of  God.  The  ideal  state 
has  not  been  reached  so  long  as  that  condition  exists,  or 
the  further  arrangement  by  which  the  rich  church  and 
its  poor  chapel  are  kept  distinct  one  from  the  other. 


SABBATH-SUNDAY 

ST.  MARK  ii.,  27:  The  sabbath  was  made  for  man,  and  not 
man  for  the  sabbath :  so  that  the  Son  of  man  is  lord  even  over 
the  sabbath. 

IN  the  intense  anxiety  of  the  Jewish  religious  leaders  to 
maintain  and  increase  the  sanctity  of  the  Jewish 
people,  to  separate  them  clearly  and  absolutely  from  the 
heathen  nations  among  which  they  lived,  great  emphasis 
was  placed  upon  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath  Day. 
It  was  guarded  and  protected  by  all  sorts  of  rules  and 
interpretations  of  the  law  to  keep  it  inviolate,  until  it 
came  to  be  felt,  by  many  certainly,  that  the  breach  of 
Sabbath  laws  was  more  serious  than  the  breach  of  those 
laws  which  are  inherently  moral  laws. 

Jesus  found  Himself  continually  and  sharply  in  con- 
flict with  the  Sabbatarians.  On  the  occasion  on  which 
the  words  of  my  text  were  spoken  the  conflict  was  this: 
as  He  and  His  disciples  were  going  through  the  corn  fields 
on  the  Sabbath  Day,  they  picked  the  fresh  heads  of 
grain  and  ate  them  as  they  passed  along.  The  Pharisees 
declared  that  this  was  technically  work,  the  reaping  of 
the  grain,  and  therefore  prohibited  on  the  Sabbath  Day. 
This  was  the  pretence  of  the  Sabbath,  losing  sight  of  its 
object  and  purpose  in  the  consideration  of  the  outward 
form,  making  man  the  slave  of  the  Sabbath  law  instead 
of  realising  that  the  Sabbath  law  was  for  the  purpose  of 

162 


Sabbath-Sunday  163 

making  his  life  happier,  brighter,  more  restful  and  more 
at  peace  with  God.  So  Jesus  uttered  this  very  common- 
sense  protest  against  the  Sabbatarians:  "The  sabbath 
was  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for  the  sabbath:  so  that 
the  Son  of  man  is  lord  even  over  the  sabbath."  Grasping 
the  principle  for  which  the  Sabbath  exists,  we  are  to  use 
ordinary  common  sense  in  the  application  of  that  prin- 
ciple. You  will  remember  other  cases  of  conflict.  For 
instance,  once  our  Lord  healed  a  man  with  a  withered 
hand  on  the  Sabbath.  Scribes  and  Pharisees  protested 
that  He  broke  the  Sabbath  Day  by  doing  work. 

Now  primarily  the  Sabbath  was  for  rest.  "  Remem- 
ber that  thou  keep  holy  the  Sabbath  Day,"  was  the  old 
Mosaic  word,  the  original  law  of  the  Hebrews.  When 
later  thinkers  and  religious  leaders  tried  to  explain  the 
origin  of  the  Sabbath,  they  explained  it  either  as  some- 
thing which  commenced  with  creation,  God  Himself 
resting  on  the  Sabbath,  when  through  six  days  He  had 
toiled  in  making  the  universe;  or  as  something  connected 
with  the  origin  of  the  Jewish  people,  that,  as  they  had 
been  slaves  in  Egypt  and  there  toiled  for  others,  so  they 
must  realise  the  need  of  rest  for  all,  and  on  one  day  in 
the  week  give  respite  from  toil  to  the  slaves  that  toiled 
for  them  and  to  their  very  beasts  of  burden.1  Later  Ju- 
daism connected  the  worship  of  God  with  this  day  in  a 
special  manner  in  the  synagogue  services,  because  on 
this  day  men  were  free  from  toil  and  therefore  it  was  es- 
pecially feasible  to  gather  together  for  the  study  of  the 
Law,  for  prayer  and  meditation.  At  the  same  time 

i  The  one  explanation  will  be  found  in  what  we  may  call 
the  commentary  on  the  Sabbath  Word  in  Exodus  xx.,  the 
other  in  Deuteronomy  v. 


1 64  Modern  Christianity 

they  also  made  this  a  day  of  gladness,  of  pleasant  social 
intercourse,  and  of  orderly  merry-making. 

When  Christianity  became  the  heir  of  Judaism,  a  cer- 
tain part  of  the  Sabbath  idea  was  transferred  to  Sunday. 
The  true  Lord's  day  or  Sunday  was  based  primarily  not 
on  the  Sabbath  law,  but  on  personal  devotion  to  Jesus 
Christ.  It  was  a  weekly  commemoration,  on  the  first 
day  of  each  week,  of  His  glorious  resurrection,  a  day  on 
which  Christians  gathered  together  for  receiving  the 
Holy  Communion,  for  telling  the  tale  of  Jesus,  and  mak- 
ing application  of  His  teaching  to  the  matters  of  their 
daily  life.  When  the  state  became  Christianised,  then 
this  day  was  made  a  holiday,  and  little  by  little  the 
Jewish  Sabbath  of  rest  was  transferred  to  the  Christian 
Sunday  of  worship  and  the  two  combined  in  one.  Oddly 
enough,  at  and  after  the  Reformation,  among  English 
sectarians,  there  developed  a  novel  and  hitherto  un- 
heard of  conception  of  the  Sabbath,  Which  ultimately 
influenced  the  whole  Anglo-Saxon  world,  the  "  Puritan 
Sabbath/'  the  conception  underlying  which  seemed  to 
be  not  primarily  the  biblical  conception  of  Sabbath  rest 
and  gladness,  but  an  unbiblical  and  even  anti-biblical 
conception  of  quiet  and  sadness.  The  emphasis  was 
put  not  on  abstention  from  labour,  that  those  who 
toil  may  have  their  opportunity  of  rest  and  refresh- 
ment and  merry-making,  but  of  abstention  from  and 
prohibition  of  all  amusement;  the  question  of  ab- 
stention from  labour  being  really  made  secondary  to 
that  of  abstention  from  recreation. 

It  is  strange  how,  in  the  development  of  a  religion, 
people  will  sometimes  reach  the  opposite  pole  from  that 
at  which  they  start,  and  utilise  the  name  of  the  founder 


Sabbath-Sunday  165 

of  the  religion  in  support  of  that  which  is  the  direct  op- 
posite of  his  teaching.  Our  Lord  Himself  accepted  Sab- 
bath Day  invitations  to  dinner.  He  and  His  disciples 
took  part  in  the  orderly  merry-making  of  the  Jewish 
Sabbath,  which  was  an  essential  feature  of  the  Sabbath 
observance  in  His  time;  but  many  of  His  followers  of 
to-day  would  denounce  their  brethren  who  should  do 
the  same  thing  now  as  un-Christian  or  anti-Christian  in 
their  conduct.  Similarly  our  Lord  and  His  followers 
used  wine,  and  even  commended  its  use;  but,  in  this 
country  at  least,  some  Christians  make  abstention  from 
all  liquor  an  essential  of  their  religion.  What  in  reality 
our  combined  Sunday  and  Sabbath  should  be  is  a  day  of 
rest  from  toil,  a  day  of  worship,  and  a  day  of  wholesome 
recreation  and  merry-making;  but  first  and  foremost 
a  day  of  rest  from  toil.  There  is  the  great  reality  of  the 
Sabbath,  and  I  am  afraid  I  must  say  that  the  churches 
and  Churchmen,  who  have  often  been  so  insistent  in 
fighting  against  what  they  call  the  desecration  of  the 
Sabbath  Day  for  purposes  of  excursions,  the  opening  of 
places  of  amusement  and  the  like,  have  failed  to  con- 
cern themselves  with  the  great  reality  of  securing  for  all 
who  labour  an  opportunity  for  rest  and  recreation. 

The  thoughts  of  municipal  and  social  students  and 
reformers  have  been  latterly  much  concentrated  upon 
Pittsburgh,  and  many  interesting  investigations  have 
been  made  into  the  industrial  conditions  prevailing  in 
the  great  mills  of  that  city,  the  social  life  of  the  mill- 
hands  and  operatives,  their  housing  conditions,  their 
home  life,  and  the  like.  From  the  investigations  made 
it  would  seem  that  in  many  of  the  great  steel  works  the 
workmen  are  obliged  to  work  seven  days  in  the  week 


1 66  Modern  Christianity 

and  in  general  twelve  hours  a  day,  the  wages  of  sixty  per 
cent,  of  the  workers  being  not  more  than  sixteen  and  one 
half  cents  an  hour,  or  two  dollars  for  a  twelve-hour  day. 
These  conditions  are  simply  brutalising  and  degrading. 
Go-incidentally  another  investigation  was  made,  dealing 
with  the  liquor  problem,  and  it  appeared  that  under 
these  conditions  the  men  spend  more  upon  liquor  than 
those  do  who  elsewhere  have  higher  wages  and  better 
hours.  The  brutalising  influence  of  their  living  condi- 
tions leads  them  to  seek  brutish  pleasures. 

Now  here  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  Christian  men 
should  denounce  and  fight  against.  Here  is  the  work 
for  your  women's  Sabbath  Alliances  and  the  like  to 
take  up, — to  secure  to  such  men  as  these  reasonable 
hours  of  toil,  reasonable  remuneration,  and  a  day  of  rest 
in  every  week. 

But  Pittsburgh  is  not  the  only  place  where  such 
conditions  prevail.  The  same  or  similar  conditions  pre- 
vail in  other  cities  also,  and  the  Church  has  not  been  a 
leader  in  curing  them.  It  has  not  taken  the  part  which 
it  should  in  uniting  with  the  labouring  men,  backing 
their  demands  for  reasonable  hours  and  for  a  day  of  rest. 
Reputable  and  religious  men  and  women  are  stock- 
holders in  corporations  in  this  city  which  are  violating 
the  very  fundamental  principle  of  the  Sabbath  law.  How 
dare  they  make  money  out  of  the  oppression  of  the  poor  ? 
How  dare  they  derive  their  dividends  from  a  business 
which  compels  men  to  work  like  slaves  seven  days  in 
every  week?  Remember  that  you  were  slaves  in  the 
land  of  Egypt  and  see  to  it  that  you  make  no  other  peo- 
ple work  as  slaves  as  you  worked,  but  that  you  grant  to 
all  whom  you  employ,  directly  or  indirectly,  the  rest 


Sabbath-Sunday  167 

which  is  their  due,  and  which  is  needed  for  wholesome 
living  and  the  development  of  mind  and  soul  and  body. 
That  was  the  law  of  the  Jew  as  interpreted  by  the  He- 
brew prophets:  and  in  principle  it  is  the  law  of  the  Chris- 
tian also.  But  even  as  you  sit  here  you  can  hear  the 
noise  of  the  trolleys  running  up  and  down  this  avenue. 
They  must  run  Sunday  as  well  as  week  days,  you  say, 
and  there  are  many  other  sorts  of  work  which  must  go 
on  through  all  the  week;  but  there  is  no  proper  reason 
why  the  individual  men  or  women  who  do  the  necessary 
Sunday  work  should  be  compelled  to  work  seven  days 
through  without  a  rest.  And  yet  those  who  work  on 
Sunday  are  not  in  fact  given  a  day  of  rest  at  some  other 
time  during  the  week.  There  are  boys  and  girls  and 
men  and  women  in  this  congregation  who  have  no  day 
of  rest  whatever.  It  is  with  great  difficulty,  even,  and 
then  only  at  rare  intervals,  that  they  can  attend  Church 
services,  because  their  employers,  either  for  their  own 
greed,  or  more  often  through  the  fault  of  the  system 
under  which  they  live,  keep  them  at  work  on  Sundays 
as  on  week  days. 

Here  is  the  great  reality  of  the  Sabbath:  one  day's 
rest  in  seven.  If  you,  as  Christian  men  and  women,  are 
concerned  for  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  that  is 
what  you  should  demand  and  what  you  should  insist 
upon.  You  cannot  be  parties  to  this  breach  of  divine 
law,  you  cannot  profit  from  it,  and  you  must  labour 
to  change  these  conditions. 

And  now,  what  is  the  pretence  of  the  Sabbath  ?  I  am 
sick  and  disgusted  with  the  men  and  women  who,  with 
mawkish  sentimentality  and  often,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
utter  hypocrisy,  wink  at  and  share  in  these  fundamen- 


1 68  Modern  Christianity 

tal  violations  of  the  Sabbath,  but  hold  up  their  hands  in 
holy  horror  if  hard-worked  men  and  women  seek  recre- 
ation, merriment,  and  refreshment  on  that  day.  These 
are  they  who  make  a  pretence  of  the  Sabbath, — the 
people  who  are  concerned  in  blocking  amusement  and 
gladness  and  social  intercourse,  and  who  have  nothing 
to  say  against  the  cruel  desecration  of  the  Sabbath  by 
enforced  labour.  One  day's  rest  in  seven:  that  is  the 
great  principle.  The  day  itself  makes  relatively  little 
difference.  To  the  Jew  there  seemed  to  be  something 
sacrosanct  in  the  seventh  day,  but  we,  following  the 
leadership  of  Christ,  broke  from  that,  for  we  know  no 
days  which  are  holy  as  such.  We  start  upon  the  princi- 
ple: a  rest  from  toil  for  all  who  labour,  one  day  in  seven ; 
the  opportunity  to  lead  a  rational  life,  to  have  some  time 
for  refreshment  and  recreation,  some  time  when  it  is 
possible  to  improve  the  mind,  some  time  which  one  can 
give  to  the  education  and  refreshment  of  the  soul. 

Our  Sunday  laws  are  a  perfect  chaos.  The  original 
principle  on  which  they  were  founded  seems  to  have 
been  rather  a  supposed  religious  sanctity  attaching  to 
the  first  day  of  the  week  than  the  idea  of  securing  for  all 
an  opportunity  to  rest  from  toil  and  labour  one  day  in 
seven.  Gradually,  perhaps,  we  are  moving  toward  this 
latter  position,  but  in  doing  so  many  inconsistencies 
have  been  brought  about.  Some  special  interest  suc- 
ceeds in  getting  a  measure  through  the  Legislature 
which  permits  a  certain  class  of  work  on  Sunday  or  the 
sale  of  certain  classes  of  things.  One  thing  may  be  sold, 
another  not.  It  is  lawful  to  open  your  shop  to  sell  to- 
bacco on  Sunday,  or  newspapers,  or  delicatessen,  or  con- 
fectionery. It  is  not  lawful  to  sell  magazines  or  canned 


Sabbath-Sunday  169 

goods  or  bottled  goods.  A  delicatessen  shop  or  a  drug 
store  or  a  tobacconist's  may  stand  open  all  day  long  and 
sell  what  it  will,  but  a  grocery  shop  or  the  book  store  or 
the  baker's  next  door  suffers  a  penalty  if  it  opens  and 
sells  the  same  things.  More  confusing  than  the  laws 
themselves  are  the  extraordinary  and  incongruous  de- 
cisions of  our  courts.  I  should  not  wish  to  be  indicted 
for  contempt  of  court,  but  I  think  I  speak  within  bounds 
in  saying  that  the  courts  of  this  state  certainly,  and  of 
this  city  especially,  have  not  earned  by  their  actions 
and  decisions  the  respect  of  the  intelligent  portion  of  the 
community,  and  that  they  have  helped  to  increase  that 
contempt  of  law,  that  lawlessness  which  is  character- 
istic of  the  great  mass  of  our  people. 

With  regard  to  amusements  and  recreations  the  situ- 
ation is  still  worse,  and  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  secure 
any  rational  legislation,  because  of  the  combination  of  a 
class  of  sentimentalists  who,  under  the  name  of  religion, 
stand  for  the  pretence  of  the  Sabbath,  and  of  shysters, 
grafters,  and  vicious  politicians  who  prefer  to  have  laws 
which  are  inconsistent,  unjust,  and  impossible  of  en- 
forcement, so  as  to  give  the  better  opportunity  to  vio- 
late all  law  or  profit  by  its  violation.  And  worst  of  all, 
for  these  very  reasons,  is  the  situation  regarding  the 
liquor  traffic.  If  you  keep  a  hotel  or  a  bawdy  house,  you 
may  sell  liquor  on  Sunday,  but  if  you  keep  a  restaurant 
or  a  saloon,  the  sale  of  liquor  is  forbidden,  under  the 
strictest  penalties. 

"The  sabbath  was  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for  the 
sabbath :  so  that  the  Son  of  man  is  lord  even  over  the 
sabbath."  Take  home  to  yourselves  the  words  of  our 
Lord  Christ;  seek  realities  in  this  Sunday  matter,  and 


1 70  Modern  Christianity 

remember  that  it  is  not  the  day  itself  which  is  the  end, 
it  is  something  which  lies  behind  that, — the  avoidance 
of  oppression,  an  opportunity  of  rest  and  recreation  for 
every  man;  that  his  toil  should  be  limited  to  reasonable 
hours,  that  he  should  have  opportunities  for  refresh- 
ment, enjoyment,  merry-making,  and  that  some  time 
should  be  given  him  for  this  purpose.  With  our  system 
of  the  week  of  seven  days,  the  natural  and  logical 
method  is  to  give  to  this  one  day  in  seven. 

Finally,  do  not  seek  to  impose  your  preconceived 
ideas  upon  others  in  the  name  of  God.  Let  them  have 
the  freedom  of  their  thoughts  and  their  beliefs  and 
their  practices. 


WISDOM 

(TO  YOUNG  MEN) 

PROVERBS  iii.,  13:  Happy  is  the  man  that  findeth  wisdom, 
and  the  man  that  getteth  understanding.  •• 

THE  Book  of  Proverbs  belongs  to  that  division  of 
Hebrew  literature  called  Wisdom.  The  wisdom 
here  commended  is  that  sanctified  common  sense  which 
is  in  harmony  with  the  conditions  of  life  and  therefore 
with  God,  because  those  conditions  of  life  come  from 
God.  Adhesion  to  these  principles,  the  Book  of  Pro- 
verbs teaches,  will  bring  prosperity  and  happiness. 

The  main  part  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs  consists  of  a 
collection  of  maxims  looking  to  the  establishment  of  a 
safe,  peaceful,  and  happy  life  in  the  family  and  the  com- 
munity. We  have  here  neither  a  code  of  laws  nor  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  great  foundation  principles  which  govern 
the  universe  and  which  should  inspire  and  control  the 
life  of  man.  Some  of  the  precepts  contained  in  the  Book 
of  Proverbs  sound  like  merely  selfish,  prudential  con- 
siderations, and  indeed  all  proverbial  literature  has 
something  of  that  Poor  Richard  quality  in  it  with  which 
Americans  of  an  earlier  generation  were  so  familiar 
from  the  maxims  of  Franklin.  It  is  worth  noting  that 
in  a  collection  of  religious  literature  which  we  regard  as 
inspired  there  should  be  a  book  containing  maxims  of 

171 


172  Modern  Christianity 

this  character,  emphasising  the  fact  that  prudence, 
thrift,  honesty,  equity,  morality  are  of  great  importance 
in  our  daily  life,  because  their  observance  will  bring 
comfort  and  prosperity. 

And  now  for  one  minute  let  us  consider  the  book  it- 
self. If  you  will  read  the  book  with  any  care,  you  will 
see  that  it  is  not  one  collection  of  proverbs,  but  several. 
Here  is  a  heading,  at  the  beginning  of  Chapter  X.,  which 
tells  you  that  what  follows  is  a  collection  of  maxims 
known  as  the  "  Proverbs  of  Solomon."  You  turn  on  a 
little  farther  and  in  the  22d  chapter,  the  ijth  verse, 
you  will  find  another  heading,  "The  Words  of  the  Wise 
Men."  I  n  this  collection  is  contained  that  little  poem  on 
the  miseries  of  drunkenness,  commencing:  "Who  says 
alas !  who  laments,  who  complains?  They  that  sit  over 
their  wine,  they  that  are  always  tasting  drink."  Then 
the  wine  is  described  as  "smooth  to  go  down;  afterward 
it  bites  like  a  snake;  your  eyes  see  strange  things;  your 
heart  speaks  bad  things;  you  are  like  a  man  lying  down 
at  sea,  like  a  man  asleep  at  the  top  of  a  mast."  You  turn 
on  a  little  farther  to  the  24th  chapter,  the  23d  verse, 
and  find  another  heading:  "These  also  are  sayings  of 
the  wise  men."  It  is  this  collection  which  contains  the 
famous  description  of  the  sluggard:  "  I  passed  the  field 
of  a  sluggard,  the  vineyard  of  a  foolish  man,  and,  see,  it 
was  overgrown  with  thorns;  it  was  all  covered  over  with 
nettles,  its  stone  wall  was  broken  down.  I  looked  and 
laid  it  to  heart;  I  saw  and  took  warning  therefrom." 

Commencing  with  the  25th  chapter  we  have  another 
collection  of  so-called  "Proverbs  of  Solomon,"  copied 
out,  we  are  told,  by  the  men  of  Hezekiah,  King  of  Judah. 
Go  on  a  little  farther,  to  the  30th  chapter,  and  you  find 


Wisdom  173 

"The  Words  of  Agur,  Son  of  Yakeh."  In  the  same 
chapter  is  a  collection  of  riddles;  then  follow  "The 
Words  of  King  Lemuel,"  and  then,  at  the  close  of  all, 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  3ist  chapter,  an  acrostic  poem, 
a  description  of  the  virtuous  housewife. 

Now,  is  not  this  interesting,  as  showing  that  we  have 
collected  in  this  book  not  the  proverbs  of  one  man 
only,  but  the  proverbial  wisdom  of  a  people?  These 
collections  show  a  growth  of  this  proverbial  wisdom, 
covering  a  considerable  period  of  time,  the  formation  of 
collection  after  collection  of  proverbs;  and  so  sometimes 
the  same  proverb  is  repeated  in  different  collections. 
Solomon's  name  is  attached  to  the  book  as  we  have  it, 
not  because  he  wrote  these  proverbs  and  poems,  but  be- 
cause his  name  had  come  to  be  the  synonym  of  proverb- 
ial wisdom,  and  hence  his  name  was  attached  by  the 
Jews  to  all  such  literature,  whenever  it  was  composed. 
Even  as  late  as  the  time  of  Herod,  that  is,  roughly,  nine 
hundred  years  after  Solomon,  we  find  a  book,  not  in- 
cluded in  our  Bible,  in  which  reference  is  made  to  the 
death  of  Pompey,  with  the  name  of  Solomon  attached 
to  it.  A  strange  custom,  this  seems  to  us,  but  it  was  a 
custom  very  prevalent  in  those  old  times. 

These  collections  of  proverbs  represent  the  accumu- 
lated experience  of  the  race  of  God-fearing  Jews.  Note 
the  words  with  which  the  whole  book  opens: 

"The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  knowledge; 
The  foolish  despise  wisdom  and  instruction; 
Hear,  my  son,  the  instruction  of  thy  father, 
And  forsake  not  the  teachings  of  thy  mother." 

It  is  the  experience  of  the  race  which  has  been  passed 


174  Modern  Christianity 

down  that  constitutes  this  wisdom.  This  wisdom  is 
founded  on  the  fear  of,  that  is,  the  religion  of  God,  and 
this  wisdom  the  youth  should  acquire  from  father  and 
mother. 

Some  of  the  proverbs,  as  I  have  said,  are  strictly  pru- 
dential and  in  so  far  selfish  in  their  character  as  that  they 
deal  with  one's  duty  towards  oneself,  like  this:  "He 
catches  a  strange  dog  by  the  ears  that  meddles  in  other 
men's  strife."  That  is:  Mind  your  own  business  and 
do  not  interfere  with  the  quarrels  of  other  people.  Of 
a  similar  character  is  this  admonition  to  silence  with 
regard  to  one's  own  affairs: 

"He  that  guards  his  mouth  is  safe; 
He  that  opes  his  mouth  is  lost"; 

or  this  recommendation  not  to  assert  one's  own  merits: 

"Let  another  praise  you  and  not  yourself; 
A  stranger  and  not  your  own  lips" ; 

which  reminds  one,  in  certain  ways,  of  our  Lord's  ad- 
vice to  those  that  are  bidden  to  a  feast  not  to  take  the 
chief  place,  lest  another  more  honourable  come  and  you 
be  forced  to  surrender  the  seat  to  him.  It  is  better  to 
take  a  lowly  place,  so  that  when  he  that  bade  you  come 
he  may  say  to  you,  "Come  up  higher,  and  you  shall 
have  honour  of  them  that  sit  at  meat."  Some  are  shrewd 
characterisations  of  types  of  men  whom  we  all  know, 
like  this:  "Clouds  and  wind  without  rain;  a  man  that 
promises  and  does  not  give."  Commendations  of  the 
simple  life  are  frequent:  "Some  are  rich  and  have 
nothing;  some  are  poor  with  great  wealth."  Thrift  and 
the  value  of  hard  labour  are  emphasised:  "Too  much 


Wisdom  175 

honey  is  not  good;  there  is  honour  in  hard  tasks." 
One  of  the  sharpest  of  all  the  proverbs  condemns  the 
thoughtless  fool — the  practical  joker,  who,  seeking  his 
own  fun,  produces  often  most  tragical  results:  "Like  a 
madman  dealing  death  with  firebrands  and  arrows  is  he 
that  deceives  his  neighbour  and  says,  Am  I  not  in 
sport?"  Throughout  all  runs  the  assertion  of  the  retri- 
bution that  awaits  evil-doing:  "Who  digs  a  pit  shall 
fall  in  it;  who  rolls  a  stone,  it  shall  come  back  to  him." 

Without  a  formal  statement  of  the  law  of  love,  many 
of  the  proverbs  breathe  its  spirit,  setting  forth,  after 
the  practical  manner  of  this  literature,  the  fact  that 
love  and  kindliness  do  bring  happiness.  So  we  have 
this  proverb:  "The  life  of  the  flesh  is  a  sound  heart; 
but  envy  is  rottenness  of  the  bones."  And  this:  "Who 
covers  an  error  seeks  love ;  who  harps  on  it  loses  a  friend". 

The  small  virtues  are  exalted  in  these  proverbial 
sayings,  as,  for  instance,  the  great  value  of  the  kindly 
word:  " Pleasant  words  are  a  honeycomb;  sweet  to  the 
soul  and  health  to  the  bones."  In  contrast  with  this  is 
a  proverb  applicable  to  those  whose  glad  words  cause 
pain  and  not  pleasure  because  they  result  from  lack  of 
sympathy  with  the  condition  of  another.  Hear  this : 
"Vinegar  upon  a  wound ;  one  that  sings  songs  to  a  heavy 
heart."  The  great  Goethe's  favourite  proverb  was  one 
of  those  dealing  with  the  fitting  use  of  words :  "  Apples 
of  gold  in  silver  setting ;  words  smoothly  spoken."  One 
may  compare  with  this  proverb,  meant  to  describe  the 
value  of  soft  speech,  another  proverb  intended  to  warn 
against  the  danger  of  smooth  words  used  to  cover  evil 
thoughts:  "Silver  dross  laid  on  a  pot  of  clay;  smooth 
lips  and  a  wicked  heart." 


176  Modern   Christianity 

My  object  is  not  to  discuss  the  Book  of  Proverbs; 
but  there  is  so  much  that  is  fascinating  in  it  that  when 
one  begins  one  is  tempted  to  call  attention  first  to  this 
and  then  to  that  nugget  of  wit  and  practical  wisdom; 
the  exhortations  to  honesty:  "Dishonest  bread  is  sweet 
to  the  taste;  afterward  the  mouth  is  full  of  gravel";  the 
description  of  the  bargainer,  who  existed  then,  as  he 
(or  she)  does  to-day,  even  among  good  Christian  people, 
who  boasts  of  overreaching  his  neighbour:  "  Bad,  bad, 
says  the  buyer;  then  he  goes  out  and  boasts  of  it";  the 
characterisation  of  the  effects  of  careless  workmanship, 
producing  consequences  as  disastrous  as  if  they  were 
wrought  with  full  intention  of  evil:  "He  that  is  careless 
in  his  work  is  own  brother  to  the  destroyer";  the 
quaint  bits  of  wisdom  that  deal  with  the  perplexities 
of  marital  and  domestic  life,  generally  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  man,  and  yet  with  a  high  estimation  of 
womanly  virtue:  "House  and  goods  are  inherited; 
but  a  wife  is  a  gift  from  the  Lord."  But  hear  this 
proverb  on  the  woman  whose  only  merit  is  her  face: 
"A  gold  ring  in  a  pig's  snout;  a  fair  woman  without 
sense." 

Before  leaving  the  proverbs  themselves,  I  wish  to  say 
that  the  very  highest  reach  of  the  practical  teaching  of 
love  in  the  Old  Testament  is  contained  in  one  of  the  say- 
ings of  this  book,  which  comes  very  close  to  the  teaching 
of  our  Lord.  "  If  your  enemy  hunger,  feed  him,  if  he 
thirst,  give  him  water  to  drink;  so  you  heap  coals  of  fire 
on  his  head,  and  the  Lord  will  reward  you."  But  even 
this  contains  the  thought,  not  of  the  inward  spiritual 
blessing,  but  of  the  external  reward  which  results  from 
doing  good.  The  position  of  the  book  in  this  regard 


Wisdom  177 

may  be  said  to  be  summed  up  in  this  proverb:  "Who 
follows  righteousness  and  love,  finds  life,  success,  and 
honour." 

The  Book  of  Proverbs  as  it  exists  is  what  we  com- 
monly call  an  anthology — collections  of  sayings,  or  se- 
lections from  collections  of  sayings,  combined  together. 
To  these  collections  there  has  been  prefixed  an  intro- 
duction. This  introduction,  which  is  of  a  somewhat 
composite  character,  comprises  the  first  nine  chapters 
of  the  book.  In  it  the  author  undertakes  to  set  forth 
the  characteristics  of  wisdom.  He  addresses  himself 
especially  to  young  men.  You  will  remember  how  over 
and  over  again  occur  the  words  "  my  son."  It  is  a  warn- 
ing to  the  young  man  against  the  evils  and  dangers  of 
life,  and  an  exhortation  to  him  to  learn  wisdom,  be- 
cause success  and  happiness  in  life  depend  upon  the 
adhesion  to  those  principles  of  morality  which  he  desig- 
nates as  wisdom.  The  experience  and  practice  of  man- 
kind, the  wisest  and  best  of  them  through  the  ages,  have 
shown  that  departure  from  these  principles  means  dis- 
aster; and  if  God  be  the  maker  and  governor  of  the  uni»- 
verse,  which  the  writer  assumes  without  question  to  be 
the  case,  then  that  is  proof  that  these  principles  are 
from  God.  True  wisdom  is  to  understand  and  follow 
these  divine  principles  as  expressed  in  God's  universe. 
"To  find  wisdom  and  get  understanding,"  to  know 
God's  ways,  and  put  that  knowledge  in  practice  is  to 
become  master  of  oneself  and  of  the  universe.  There- 
fore, above  all  things  let  the  young  man's  effort  be  to 
acquire  wisdom.  Sometimes  the  author  personifies 
wisdom  as  though  it  were  itself  God  or  the  expression 
of  God  to  men: 


178  Modern   Christianity 

"Wisdom  crieth  aloud  in  the  street; 
She  uttereth  her  voice  in  the  squares; 
At  the  head  of  thoroughfares  she  crieth; 
At  the  gates  of  the  city  she  speaketh  her  words; 
How  long,  ye  fools,  will  ye  love  folly  ? " 

With  all  his  might  he  emphasises  wisdom  as  the  thing 
which,  above  all,  is  to  be  sought.  "First  wisdom;  get 
wisdom;  with  all  thou  hast,  get  understanding."  That 
this  wisdom  is  not,  in  the  conception  of  the  writer, 
something  separate  from  religion  is  made  clear  by  such 
passages  as  this,  which  occur  in  this  same  prologue: 
"Trust  in  the  Lord  with  all  thy  heart.  Lean  not  upon 
thine  own  understanding.  In  all  thy  ways  acknow- 
ledge Him  and  He  shall  make  plain  thy  paths." 

The  verse  which  I  have  taken  as  my  text  is  the  be- 
ginning of  a  brief  passage  in  this  prologue,  a  poem  by 
itself,  which  describes  the  excellence  of  wisdom.  The 
passage  reads: 

"  Happy  the  man  that  fmdeth  wisdom, 
The  mortal  that  getteth  understanding. 
For  its  gain  is  better  than  gain  of  silver, 
And  the  profit  thereof  than  fine  gold. 
More  precious  is  she  than  pearls; 
And  none  of  thy  treasures  are  equal  thereto; 
Length  of  days  in  her  right  hand, 
In  her  left  hand  riches  and  honour; 
Her  ways,  ways  of  pleasantness, 
And  all  her  paths  peace. 
She  is  a  tree  of  life  to  them  that  lay  hold  on  her; 
And  happy  is  he  that  obtaineth  her/' 


Wisdom  1 79 

"Happy  the  man  that  fmdeth  wisdom,  the  mortal 
that  getteth  understanding ":  the  young  man  who,  in 
the  beginning  of  his  career,  puts  himself  in  harmony 
with  God  and  the  universe,  determining  his  life  by  the 
divine,  God-given  principles  of  the  universe,  and  setting 
out  to  work  with,  not  in  opposition  to,  God  and  the 
nature  which  God  has  placed  in  him. 

i .  What  do  you  purpose  to  be  or  to  do  in  life  ?  There 
was  a  story  connected  with  a  room  which  I  occupied 
in  Yale  College,  told  to  me  by  my  predecessor  and  passed 
on  by  me  to  those  who  came  after,  as  follows:  James 
Kent,  the  famous  Chancellor  of  New  York,  1814  to 
1823,  occupied  that  room1  as  an  undergraduate.  After 
he  had  become  Chancellor,  on  the  occasion  of  one  of 
his  class  reunions,  he  sought  out  and  revisited  the  old 
room.  In  answer  to  his  knock  a  student's  voice  bade 
him  come  in.  He  entered,  to  see  a  young  man  sitting 
in  a  chair,  tilted  back,  with  his  feet  on  the  window-sill. 
"Young  gentleman,"  he  said,  "one  evening  at  about 
this  time  I  was  sitting  in  precisely  the  attitude  which 
you  now  occupy  and  thinking  about  my  future  life. 
I  then  and  there  resolved  to  become  Chancellor  of  the 
State  of  New  York.  My  name  is  James  Kent.  I  am 
Chancellor  of  the  State  of  New  York." 

It  is  not  often  that  a  man's  plan  and  purpose  of  life 
can  be  carried  out  with  such  literal  exactness  as  in  this 
case,  but  in  general  it  may  be  said  that  what  a  man  re- 
solves to  do  or  to  be  he  can  achieve  or  become  if  he 
really  makes  that  the  object  of  his  life,  concentrat- 

>  If  the  tradition  of  my  time  was  correct,  this  room  was  in 
Old  South  Middle,  still  standing,  north  entry,  third  floor, 
front,  middle. 


i8o  Modern   Christianity 

ing  all  his  powers  and  energies  on  the  pursuit  of  that 
one  thing.  Success  in  life  depends  on  self  determina- 
tion, to  an  extent  which  I  think  most  people  do  not 
fully  apprehend.  At  the  outset  of  your  life  set  an 
aim  before  you;  have  a  definite  purpose.  Do  not 
merely  drift,  letting  your  life  be  determined  by  chance 
or  circumstance. 

2.  For  the  achievement  of  the  purpose  which  you 
set  before  you,  if  that  purpose  be  at  all  worth  achiev- 
ing, there  is  need,  first  and  foremost,  of  absolute  mas- 
tery of  yourself,  of  self-control  and  self-denial.  You 
cannot  use  your  strength,  your  time,  your  means,  if 
you  have  such,  for  self-indulgence,  and  pleasure  seek- 
ing, with  any  hope  of  making  that  success  in  life  of 
which  I  am  speaking.  To  quote  once  more  from  the 
Book  of  Proverbs:  "The  man  that  loves  pleasure  is  poor; 
he  that  loves  luxury  does  not  grow  rich."  A  story 
which  every  Jewish  boy  has  had  held  before  him  as  the 
life  story  of  one  of  his  race  heroes  whom  he  is  to  imitate, 
a  story  which  has  come  down  to  us  also  as  part  of  our 
spiritual  heritage  from  the  Jews,  so  that  their  race  hero 
has  become  for  us  a  spiritual  hero,  is  the  story  of  Ja- 
cob. I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  character  of  Jacob 
is  altogether  lovely,  or  that  all  that  is  told  of  him  in  that 
story  is  worthy  of  imitation;  but  the  essential  elements 
of  his  character,  which  are  emphasised  in  the  contrast 
between  him  and  Esau,  are  worthy  of  imitation.  The 
man  who  will  practise  thrift,  the  man  who  will  deny 
himself  the  immediate  gain  for  the  sake  of  the  greater 
ultimate  good,  the  man  who  will  wait  patiently  to 
achieve  his  results, — with  that  man  lies  success,  and 
not  with  the  good-hearted,  good-natured,  easy-going, 


Wisdom  181 

improvident  fellow.  The  latter  represents  not  the 
genius  of  civilisation,  but  the  genius  of  barbarism,  in 
that  he  lives  merely  for  the  moment.  It  is  Jacob,  not 
Esau,  who  is  the  type  of  civilisation,  and  who  is  bound 
to  win  that  success,  the  achievement  of  which  is  a  part 
of  civilisation  in  the  race  and  in  the  individual.  Be  con- 
tent to  begin  at  the  bottom,  to  go  slowly.  It  is  as  true 
in  the  struggle  of  human  life  as  it  is  in  the  life  history  of 
the  animals,  that  the  higher  order  reaches  its  develop- 
ment the  more  slowly.  The  guinea-pig  is  born  practi- 
cally with  all  the  sense  and  all  the  faculties  which  it  is 
ever  going  to  have.  A  rabbit  or  a  squirrel  does  not 
know  as  much  when  it  is  born  and  cannot  do  as  much 
as  a  guinea-pig,  but  when  it  reaches  maturity  it  is 
vastly  in  advance  of  the  guinea-pig.  No  animal  takes 
so  long  a  period  for  its  development  as  the  human  ani- 
mal, and  none  reaches  even  approximately  the  devel- 
opment of  the  human.  So  it  is  in  our  life  struggle.  The 
young  man  who  wishes  to  commence  at  the  top,  who 
must  needs  have  at  once  the  time  and  money  for  amuse- 
ment, or  even  the  man  who  would  marry  as  soon  as  he 
starts  on  his  career,  cannot  expect  to  reach  the  same 
level  of  success  as  the  man  who  is  willing  to  forego  the 
satisfaction  of  his  desires  and  even  his  ambitions  for 
pleasure  and  comfort  and  happiness  for  the  moment, 
beginning  at  the  bottom,  learning,  earning  little,  but 
preparing  the  way  for  ultimate  greater  success,  and, 
if  he  live  aright,  greater  happiness  a  Iso. 

3.  Diligence  and  Energy.  He  who  would  succeed 
must  be  diligent  in  whatever  labour  he  undertakes  and 
he  must  perform  his  work  with  energy  and  zeal.  In- 
telligence and  tact,  special  adaptability  to  a  work  or 


182  Modern   Christianity 

peculiar  quickness  in  comprehension  seem  to  be  rather 
gifts  of  nature  than  qualities  which  we  can  acquire  by 
effort.  Diligence  and  energy,  on  the  other  hand,  are  quite 
within  the  control  of  any  man,  and  in  the  end  it  will 
be  found  that  diligence  and  energy  are  among  the  most 
powerful  agencies  which  a  man  can  employ  in  the  strug- 
gle for  success.  To  employ  all  your  opportunities,  to 
utilise  your  spare  minutes,  to  throw  yourself  into  the 
work  which  you  have  to  do,  in  your  profession  or 
employment,  or  in  your  preparation  for  that  profes- 
sion or  employment,  with  all  the  strength  of  your 
being,  will  inevitably  result  in  a  large  measure  of 
success. 

4.  Now,  combine  with  diligence  and  energy  honesty 
and  reliability,  and  any  man  has  an  asset  which  will  se- 
cure him  permanent  and  valuable  employment.  There 
is  no  individual  asset  of  the  average  man  more  valu- 
able than  honesty,  and  there  is  none  in  fact  rarer.  I 
have  coupled  with  honesty  reliability,  in  order  to  express 
a  particular  application  of  honesty:  that  you  may  be 
counted  on  under  all  circumstances  to  be  always  in 
your  place,  to  do  your  work,  whatever  the  conditions 
which  confront  you,  so  that  your  employer  may  trust 
you  as  fully  as  he  would  trust  himself;  that  you  do  not 
count  merely  what  you  are  compelled  to  do,  saying  to 
yourself:  I  am  paid  for  this  and  this  I  must  do,  but 
more  than  that  I  am  not  obliged  to  do.  Throw  your- 
self into  the  position  of  your  employer,  and  act  for 
his  interests,  so  that  he  is  able  to  rely  upon  you  in 
any  case  of  emergency  or  need,  so  that  he  may  feel  that 
he  has  your  willing  support  and  co-operation,  and  not  a 
mere  grudging  performance  of  a  task  to  which  you  are 


Wisdom  183 

enslaved,  precisely  to  the  extent  of  the  remuneration 
which  you  receive  for  the  work  done. 

I  have  said  that  honesty  is  rare.  The  conditions 
which  I  find  among  the  young  people  with  whom  1 
have  to  deal  convince  me  of  that,  as  well  as  what  I  learn 
with  reference  to  the  conduct  of  business  by  grown-up 
men  and  women.  I  find  that  in  our  schools  it  is,  as  a 
rule,  unsafe  to  leave  anything  lying  about;  there  is  dan- 
ger of  loss.  Even  in  Church  guilds  and  organisations 
we  have  constant  unfortunate  experiences  of  pilfer- 
ing. Again,  when  labourers  are  working  about  the 
premises,  there  are  apt  to  be  disappearances  of  easily 
portable  properties.  All  business  men  know  how  very 
difficult  it  is  to  find  employees  who  can  be  trusted  im- 
plicitly. To  you  young  men  I  would  say  that  the  rep- 
utation for  absolute  honesty  is  a  possession  so  precious 
from  the  mere  point  of  view  of  success  in  life,  that  it 
may  be  fairly  estimated  as  the  equivalent  of  a  consider- 
able capital  in  business.  But  honesty  must  be  estab- 
lished on  principle.  The  man  who  is  honest  because 
honesty  is  the  best  policy,  a  proverb  which  is  pro- 
foundly true,  is  not  the  man  who  can  be  thus  relied 
upon.  Looking  on  honesty  only  from  the  point  of 
view  of  policy,  occasions  will  arise  where  it  will 
seem  to  a  man  clear  that  he  can  profit  best  by  not 
adhering  too  strictly  to  the  course  of  honesty.  Now 
the  very  fact  that  a  man  might  do  this  makes 
itself  evident  in  his  character  and  his  bearing; 
for  the  principles  which  we  hold  are  apt  to  express 
themselves  in  some  intangible  way  in  our  bearing, 
and,  far  more  than  we  ordinarily  think,  people 
gauge  us  by  the  truth  which  really  lies  behind  all 


184  Modern  Christianity 

our     expressions.     They     perceive     and     feel     our 
characters. 

One  of  the  commonest  of  the  temptations  which  lead 
our  young  men  away  from  the  path  of  strict  honesty 
is  the  temptation  to  win  money  quickly  and  easily 
through  speculation  or  gambling.  Now,  gambling 
or  speculation  is  in  itself  immoral,  in  that  it  is  an  at- 
tempt to  get  something  for  nothing.  But  besides  being 
in  this  sense  immoral,  gambling  or  speculation  is  also 
hopelessly  demoralising  to  character.  This  man  sees 
others  win  money  by  gambling,  by  a  so-called  specula- 
tion in  stocks,  that  is  a  deal  in  margins,  which  is  prac- 
tically nothing  more  than  betting  that  stock  will  rise 
or  fall,  or  how  high  it  will  rise  or  how  low  it  will  fall,  or 
by  betting  on  the  horse-races;  or  possibly  he  sees  some 
one  win  ten  dollars  or  more  on  a  five  cent  bet  in  policy. 
It  seems  to  him  a  very  easy  way  of  turning  over  money 
and  he  resolves  to  take  his  chance.  He  has  a  little 
money  which  he  has  saved  from  his  earnings;  it  is  his 
own  and  he  can  do  with  it  what  he  will.  The  only  too 
common  result  which  follows  from  this  beginning  of 
gambling  is  that  before  he  realises  it  the  young  man 
has  incurred  losses  which  go  beyond  his  means,  and  to 
pay  those  losses  he  has  used  money  which  was  not  his, 
but  which  happened  to  be  temporarily  in  his  control 
or  trust.  He  must  repay  this  money,  and  the  only  way 
which  he  sees  open  to  do  so  is  by  a  lucky  bet  or  specu- 
lation. He  feels  sure  that  luck  must  come  his  way  some 
time.  He  speculates  or  bets  again,  and  before  he  knows 
it  he  is  hopelessly  involved.  It  does  not  always  happen 
that  events  follow  just  this  course,  but  even  where  the 
gambling  does  not  result  in  utter  ruin,  it  does  waste 


Wisdom  185 

the  money  which  the  young  man  should  have  been  lay- 
ing up  as  a  capital  for  investment.  And  even  if  he 
should  win  by  his  bets  or  speculations,  the  result  is 
unfortunate  for  him,  looked  at  from  the  business  stand- 
point, for  it  teaches  him  to  disregard  those  legitimate 
business  methods  of  thrift  and  energy  which  would  win 
him  real  success,  and  devote  himself  to  a  course  of  ac- 
tion which,  though  it  may  yield  him  a  certain  degree 
of  financial  gain,  will  never  advance  him  to  the  same 
high  position,  much  less  develop  in  him  the  same 
character,  which  honest  industry  and  capacity  would 
have  done. 

5.  Strenuousness  and  enjoyment.  I  have  pictured 
to  you  what,  in  the  phraseology  of  the  day,  is  desig- 
nated as  a  "strenuous  life";  but  this  I  wish  to  point  out 
— that  mere  Strenuousness  may  overreach  itself.  There 
is  a  life  lived  by  successful  business  men  in  this  city 
which  is  a  life  to  be  deplored,  not  to  be  envied.  These 
are  the  men  who  rush  from  engagement  to  engagement, 
from  task  to  task,  who  live  their  lives  in  a  whirlwind, 
pursuing  ever  greater  gain,  who  have  no  time  for  the 
real  enjoyment  of  life  or  for  the  development  of  char- 
acter. Remember  that  the  greatest  success  is  not  mere 
achievement,  but  character.  The  greatest  happiness 
is  connected  not  with  what  a  man  has  done,  but  with 
what  a  man  has  become.  The  Japanese  say  of  us,  and 
rightly,  that  we  are  so  concerned  with  the  machinery  of 
life  that  we  do  not  know  how  to  live.  The  means  have 
taken  the  place  of  the  end.  Your  effort  and  your  strug- 
gle are,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  achievement  of  sub- 
stantial happiness,  futile  if  you  have  lost  the  power 
of  enjoyment.  The  man  who,  in  the  hurry  and  rush  of 


1 86  Modern   Christianity 

his  life,  has  lost  the  power  of  enjoying  the  beauties  of 
nature,  of  art,  of  literature,  is  a  man  who  has  lost  the 
power  of  the  highest  happiness.  Remember  this  in 
your  struggle  for  place  and  success. 

6.  And  this  brings  me  to  a  consideration  of  the  ques- 
tion of  what  is  the  reality?    For  it  is  after  that  which 
is  real  that  you  must  strive.    What,  then,  is  the  real 
thing,  the  thing  which  it  is  desirable  to  possess  ?    You 
hear  much  to-day  of  the  simple  life.    I  take  it  that  the 
essence  of  the  simple  life  is  reality;  but  to  know  and 
gain  the  reality  you  must  be  true  to  yourself,  to  your 
own  nature.   You  must  yourself  determine  what  really 
is  worth  having,  not  simply  seek  after  that  which  those 
about  you  call  real.    If  your  life  is  to  be  determined 
merely  by  the  opinions  of  others;  if  you  determine 
what  you  are  to  be  and  what  you  are  to  do,  what  you 
are  to  seek  after  and  what  you  are  to  gain,  only  accord- 
ing to  the  opinions  of  those  about  you,  you  can  never 
enter  into  the  full  pleasure  of  life.    You  have  failed  to 
find  the  reality.    The  same  is  true  of  your  friendships. 
If  your  friendships  are  formed  simply  with  the  idea 
that  "this  person  can  assist  me,  help  me  forward,  he  is 
a  good  person  to  have  as  my  friend,  this  is  the  correct 
person  to  know  and  I  will  make  him  my  friend,"  you 
lose  the  power  of  knowing  the  hearts  of  men;  your 
own  best  nature  is  chilled  and  ultimately  killed,  and 
you  lose  the  very  most  precious  thing  in  life — the 
power  of  real  friendship  and  the  knowledge  of  real  love. 

7.  Right  choice.   I  have  spoken  of  the  possibility  of 
self-determination,  of  your  achieving  that  at  which 
you  aim,  reaching  that  to  which  you  aspire;   but  it 
goes  without  saying  that  in  considering  the  question  of 


Wisdom  187 

real  success  we  must  ask,  also,  How  am  I  to  determine 
that  after  which  I  shall  strive?  How  shall  I  make  the 
right  choice  in  life?  We  are  so  bound  up  with  one 
another  that  we  oftentimes  cannot  reach  that  which 
we  would  like  to  set  before  ourselves  as  our  goal  with- 
out trampling  upon  others  who  are  about  us,  without 
disregarding  what  seem  to  be  our  nearest  duties.  It  is 
possible  to  achieve  success  by  trampling  on  others,  by 
disregarding  these  duties;  but  that  success  is,  in  the 
end,  not  worth  having.  It  is  a  success  of  achievement, 
not  a  success  of  character.  I  told  you  the  story  of 
Chancellor  Kent.  Let  me  tell  you  another  story  from 
my  own  experience.  When  I  was  a  young  man  but  re- 
cently ordained,  there  came  under  my  spiritual  charge, 
in  the  little  chapel  in  which  I  was  working,  a  journey- 
man printer,  somewhat  older  than  myself,  who  wished 
to  send  through  me  what,  in  proportion  to  his  means, 
seemed  an  enormous  contribution,  for  the  education 
of  young  men  for  the  ministry.  Then  I  learned  that  he 
had,  as  a  lad,  desired  to  study  for  the  ministry.  He 
was  going  through  school  with  that  end  in  view.  He 
would  have  passed  from  the  grammar  school  to  the 
high  school,  from  the  high  school  to  college.  By  his 
own  efforts  and  those  of  his  parents  it  was  perfectly 
possible  for  him  to  do  so.  Suddenly  his  father  died, 
leaving  nothing.  This  boy  was  the  oldest.  There  was 
a  mother  and  there  were  other  children  to  be  taken  care 
of.  By  himself  he  could  have  accomplished  the  course 
of  study  and  entered  the  ministry.  If  he  had  dis- 
regarded the  obligation  to  his  mother  and  younger 
brothers  and  sisters  he  could  have  struggled  through. 
Possibly  they  might  have  succeeded  in  taking  care  of 


1 88  Modern   Christianity 

themselves;  but  he  felt  that  his  first  duty  lay  toward 
them,  and,  abandoning  the  attempt  to  complete  his 
education,  temporarily  as  he  hoped,  he  set  himself  to 
learn  a  trade  by  which  he  could  at  once  commence  to 
support  his  family.  Circumstances  were  such  that  by 
the  time  he  was  set  free  from  these  obligations  it  seemed 
impracticable  to  attempt  to  enter  the  ministry.  He  was 
too  old  to  go  back  and  take  up  his  studies  at  the  point 
where  he  had  left  them.  All  his  time  and  all  his  strength 
had  been  so  employed  in  the  intervening  period  that  he 
had  not  been  able  to  continue  intellectual  pursuits. 
What  he  had  been  unable  to  do  for  himself,  he  sought 
to  make  possible  for  some  one  else.  Now  I  say  that  that 
man  did  the  thing  that  was  right  and  that  he  achieved 
a  greater  success  than  if  he  had  entered  the  ministry — a 
greater  success  in  the  sense  that  he  developed  a  nobler, 
higher  nature,  which  is  really  the  thing  after  which  we 
strive  and  should  strive,  but  which  is  to  be  achieved 
oftentimes  only  by  precisely  such  abnegation  of  self 
and  self-interest.  Your  choice  of  what  you  will  do  and 
become  must  be  determined  in  connection  with  the  obli- 
gations of  your  life  and  your  surroundings.  Failure 
to  fulfil  obligations  which  are  laid  upon  you  by  the 
conditions  of  your  existence  would  be  to  make  what 
seems  success  really  failure. 

8.  The  ideal  and  the  maintenance  of  the  ideal.  And 
this  further  1  would  add  with  regard  to  the  right  choice: 
Hold  before  yourself  an  ideal.  Let  that  ideal  be  an  ex- 
alted one.  Do  not  be  content  with  anything  mean  or 
small  or  common.  It  sometimes  seems  to  men  that 
these  ideals  are  a  burden  and  a  hindrance  in  their 
struggle  in  life.  They  say  to  themselves:  here  are  men 


Wisdom  189 

about  me  who  do  this  or  that  and  make  a  success,  yet 
there  is  something  within  me  that  forbids  me  from  do- 
ing what  they  do,  and,  because  I  cannot  do  it,  therefore 
I  am  a  failure.  So  far  from  burdening  or  hindering  you 
in  the  struggle  for  real  success  in  life,  the  ideal  is  that 
which  really  renders  such  success  possible.  No  one 
can  achieve  the  best  results  who  does  not  have  ideals 
and  dreams.  They  are  the  things  which  are  meant  to 
lure  a  man  on  to  higher  things.  Be  sorry  not  for  your- 
self because  you  have  them,  but  be  sorry  for  the  man 
who  does  not  have  them  and  therefore  cannot  know 
that  joy  in  life  which  is  possible  for  you  if  you  strive 
and  struggle  for  the  attainment  of  your  ideal.  But 
just  because  the  ideal  is  so  high  a  thing,  therefore  its 
loss  means  to  you  who  possess  it  the  greatest  possible 
disaster.  A  man  who  has  not  seen  ideals  and  dreamed 
of  high  things  may  do  something  which  seems  abhor- 
rent to  you  and  yet  be  going  not  backwards  but  for- 
wards; but  you,  with  your  ideals  and  dreams,  if  you  do 
those  things  will  surely  fail.  To  do  them  means  for 
you  soul  death.  Count  the  ideal  or  dream  that  is 
within  you  as  a  gift  and  a  promise  from  God,  but  un- 
derstand the  condition  on  which  it  is  given  you:  that  if 
you,  seeing  these  good  and  beautiful  things,  then  turn 
backward  and  content  yourself  with  something  that  is 
lower,  your  life  will  be  made  miserable  by  the  gnawings 
of  conscience,  by  the  constant  sense  of  failure.  You 
will  enter  here  on  earth  into  the  gates  of  hell.  Main- 
tain your  ideals  as  you  value  your  souls  and  as  you 
value  happiness.  No  outward  success  is  worth  having 
which  is  purchased  with  the  gnawing  misery  of  the 
consciousness  that  you  have  failed  to  do  or  to  be 


190  Modern  Christianity 

what  you  know  and  believe  you  should  have  done 
and  become. 

9.  The  value  of  the  personal  knowledge  of  God.  I 
may  not  close  without  adding  one  word  on  the  value  of 
the  personal  knowledge  of  God;  that  you  should  be 
conscious  of  the  divine  nature  within  you,  of  the  mean- 
ing of  your  life  and  its  grandeur;  that  you  are  workers 
with  God  Himself  for  great  ends;  that  your  life  is  an 
enduring  one,  which  goes  on  through  the  ages  that  are 
to  be;  and  that,  long  as  the  years  which  stretch  before 
you  in  this  world  seem,  they  are  as  nothing  in  compari- 
son with  the  ages  of  possibility  which  stretch  on  beyond. 
Jesus  Christ  is  the  expression  to  us  of  God,  through 
whom  we  may  enter  into  a  personal  knowledge  of  Him ; 
He  is  a  pattern  to  show  us  the  meaning  and  possibilities 
of  life,  the  power  of  self-determination,  the  possibilities 
of  achievement  in  the  lowliest  conditions,  the  wonder- 
ful power  which  lies  in  our  human  nature  to  overcome 
the  world,  if  we  are  true  to  that  which  is  essentially 
divine  in  that  nature  itself;  and,  more  than  this,  He  is 
a  manifestation  to  us  of  the  very  heart  and  thought  of 
God,  by  which  we  may  know  His  purpose  toward  us 
individually,  and  attain  such  a  certainty  of  His  love 
for  us  that  we  shall  not  lose  heart  nor  fail,  and  so 
that  even  out  of  our  faults  and  our  falls  we  shall  reap 
strength  and  courage  through  the  assurance  of  His 
tender  personal  care  for  us,  His  watchful  providence 
over  us.  The  precepts  of  a  book  of  wisdom  will  not  of 
themselves  be  sufficient  to  hold  us  in  the  way  of  truth. 
The  precepts  and  teaching  which  the  parent  gives  the 
child  win  their  greatest  value,  not  from  the  words  of 
wisdom  themselves,  but  from  that  something  which 


Wisdom  191 

lies  behind  those  words,  the  something  which  makes  a 
true  father  or  mother.  And  it  is  so  with  the  wisdom 
which  you  find  recorded  in  the  Book  of  Proverbs. 
Practical  and  profound  as  all  those  sayings  may  be, 
you  will  not  walk  in  the  way  of  wisdom  unless  you  feel 
behind  that  wisdom  something  more  than  the  practi- 
cal experience  of  the  ages,  unless  you  feel  behind  it  the 
thought  and  the  love  of  God  your  Father.  Enter  into 
that  personal  relation  with  God  as  your  Father  through 
Christ  the  eternal  Son. 


LITTLE  FOXES 

\ 

(TO  YOUNG  WOMEN) 

SONG  OP  SOLOMON  ii.,  15:  Take  us  the  foxes,  the  little 
foxes,  that  spoil  the  vines:  for  our  vines  have  tender  grapes. 

THE  Song  of  Solomon,  as  it  is  called  in  our  Bibles, 
the  Song  of  Songs,  or  Canticles,  to  use  its  more 
correct  title,  is  a  collection  of  love  songs,  marriage 
hymns.  One  who  reads  the  Bible  only  casually,  and  to 
whom  the  headings  of  the  chapters  mean  more  than 
their  contents,  may  be  somewhat  surprised  at  the  state- 
ment that  we  have  in  the  Bible  a  book  entirely  com- 
posed of  love  songs.  But  these  are  not  the  only  love 
songs  in  the  Old  Testament.  If  you  will  take  up 
your  Bibles  and  turn  to  the  45th  Psalm,  you  will 
find  it  designated  in  the  heading  as  a  Song  of  Love. 
In  it  the  bride  is  pictured  as  a  queen  and  the  bride- 
groom as  a  king.  And  just  so  it  is  in  the  love 
songs  contained  in  our  book  of  the  Song  of  Solo- 
mon. Throughout  it  the  bride  is  spoken  of  as  a  queen 
and  the  bridegroom  as  a  king:  and  that  is  to-day  the 
oriental  custom.  Marriage  is  a  thing  so  beautiful,  so 
lofty,  that  the  bride  and  groom,  because  they  are  the 
principals  in  the  marriage,  for  the  time  being  become 
in  fact  kings  and  queens. 

192 


Little  Foxes  193 

Now  why,  you  may  ask,  do  we  have  love  songs  in  the 
Bible?  I  thought  the  Bible  was  a  book  of  religion;  I 
thought  the  Old  Testament  told  me  the  story  of  the 
struggles  of  God's  people  and  how  God's  spirit  was 
with  them,  preparing  the  way  for  the  coming  of  the 
Christ. 

Turn  to  your  New  Testament.  The  first  miracle, 
according  to  St.  John's  Gospel,  which  Jesus  performed, 
in  Cana  of  Galilee,  was  at  a  marriage  festival,  when  He 
thought  it  not  unfit  to  use  those  same  powers  which 
elsewhere  He  used  for  the  healing  of  the  sick  and  the 
restoration  of  the  miserable, to  turn  the  water  into  wine, 
that  the  bridegroom  might  not  be  disgraced  and  that 
there  might  be  joy  and  gladness  at  the  marriage  festi- 
val. God's  spirit  moves  not  only  in  the  great  affairs  of 
state;  God's  spirit  moves  in  the  small  affairs  of  every- 
day life,  and  Jesus  Christ  emphasised  most  strongly 
the  sanctity  of  marriage,  its  sacramental  character: 
that  nothing  may  part  the  man  and  the  woman  who 
are  united  in  the  bonds  of  matrimony.  Is  it  not  fitting, 
then,  that  there  should  be  somewhere  in  the  Bible  a 
book  which  dwells  upon  and  glorifies  the  love  of  man 
and  woman  as  a  sacred  thing?  And  I  think  that  it  is 
well  for  you  and  me  to-day,  in  this  our  country,  to  re- 
member that  there  is  such  a  book  in  the  Bible,  to 
remember  that  God's  holy  word  sanctifies  and  adorns 
that  love  and  its  expression. 

I  have  referred  to  the  headings  of  the  chapters. 
They  represent  a  mystical  interpretation  of  the  book, 
as  indicating  the  love  of  Christ  and  His  Church,  and 
their  union ;  and  it  is  this  same  thought  that  our  Church 
has  introduced  into  its  marriage  ceremony.  That  is  the 


1 94  Modern  Christianity 

mystic  significance  which  sanctifies  and  uplifts  the  love 
of  man  and  woman. 

But  it  is  not  my  intention  to  dwell  upon  the  inter- 
pretation of  this  book  as  a  whole.  I  have  chosen  a  text 
from  it,  not  because  of  its  original  significance,  but  be- 
cause of  the  meaning  which  it  has  come  to  have  to  me. 
Because  the  Bible  is  the  Book  of  God,  because  men  and 
women  have  gone  to  it  to  find  God's  word,  so,  in  the 
course  of  the  ages,  different  books  and  chapters  have 
come  to  have  new  and  different  meanings,  meanings 
which  have  grown  out  of  their  use  in  the  Church  in 
those  ages. 

•Take  up  the  Book  of  Psalms.  Turn  to  the  68th  Psalm, 
and  you  find  a  magnificent  processional,  meant  to  be 
used  in  connection  with  the  temple  services,  based  on 
the  story  of  Israel's  march  from  Sinai  into  Palestine 
and  its  conquest  of  the  Holy  Land.  But  I  cannot  read 
that  Psalm  without  remembering  that  it  was  the  bat- 
tle hymn  of  Henry  of  Navarre;  and  there  comes  before 
my  mind  the  struggle  for  religious  freedom  in  France, 
when  men  were  fighting  and  dying  for  the  right  to  read 
the  Bible,  for  the  right  to  believe  and  live  according  to 
the  dictates  of  their  consciences,  guided  by  God's  holy 
word.  1  turn  to  the  H5th  Psalm,  and  there  I  read  a 
splendid  outburst  of  praise  to  the  one  God  Almighty, 
who  is  not  like  the  idols  of  wood  and  stone  that  cannot 
see  nor  hear,  by  whose  power  Israel  has  been  kept  and 
preserved  amid  the  heathen;  and  then  there  comes  be- 
fore my  mind  the  picture  of  the  siege  of  Vienna,  when 
the  great  hosts  of  the  Turks  were  pressing  the  Christian 
capital  hard.  I  see  the  tower  of  St.  Stephen's  in  Vienna 
and  the  anxious  lookouts  stationed  there,  looking  over 


Little  Foxes  195 

the  vast  hordes  of  Turks,  straining  their  eyes  to  see  if 
help  were  coming,  while  the  Christian  nations  of  Europe, 
unconscious  of  their  danger,  not  realising  that  the  fall  of 
Vienna  meant  for  them  too  the  invasion  of  the  hordes 
of  Islam,  were  fighting  with  one  another  their  unworthy 
wars,  petty  princes  struggling  each  with  the  other  for 
the  satisfaction  of  his  vain  ambition.  But  help  came 
from  an  unexpected  quarter.  John  Sobieski,  with  his 
Poles,  appeared  upon  the  Kahlenberg,  the  hill  that 
rises  near  Vienna;  and  there  to-day  you  can  see  the 
little  chapel  where  he  and  his  officers  received  the  Sac- 
rament, as  they  prepared  to  descend  upon  the  vast 
multitudes  of  the  victorious  Turks.  And  then  they 
lifted  up  their  voices,  joining  in  the  1 1 5th  Psalm,  that 
hymn  of  praise  to  God  which  Israel  had  used  of  old, 
glorifying  His  power  and  might,  who  was  greater  than 
the  gods  of  the  heathen.  That  Psalm  gave  them  the 
inspiration  to  win  the  victory  that  saved  Europe. 

The  Bible  is  full  of  associations  like  that,  which  bind 
it  to  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church  throughout 
the  ages.  But  not  only  into  the  lives  of  princes,  not 
only  into  battles  for  freedom  and  against  oppression, — 
it  has  gone  also  into  the  every-day  life  of  the  people. 
It  has  been  an  inspiration  in  the  homes  of  the  poor- 
est. It  has  given  men  strength  to  do  the  daily  tasks  of 
life.  Those  experiences  are  mostly  unwritten.  Some  of 
you  may  have  some  association  with  one  verse  or  an- 
other, with  one  chapter  or  another,  which  makes  that 
verse  or  chapter  mean  to  you  something  very  personal, 
something  quite  outside  of  Bible  dictionaries  or  com- 
mentaries or  sermons.  When  I  turn  to  the  i4th  chap- 
ter of  St.  John's  Gospel  and  read  the  words,  "In  my 


196  Modern  Christianity 

Father's  house  are  many  mansions/'  there  comes  before 
me  the  picture  of  a  midnight  scene  in  the  house  of  a 
poor  woman,  crushed  down  by  bereavement,  a  widow 
whose  two  children,  just  on  the  verge  of  manhood  and 
womanhood,  had  been  swept  off  by  disease  in  a  manner 
most  tragic  and  awful ;  a  woman  who  seemed  to  have 
lost  control  of  herself,  to  have  lost  all  power  of  thought, 
all  hope  in  this  life  or  the  hereafter.  1  can  never  forget 
how,  as  those  words  were  read,  it  seemed  as  though  a 
new  power  came  into  her  life,  as  though  the  gates  of 
heaven  were  opened,  and  the  woman's  life  was  changed 
at  once  by  a  vision  of  the  heavenly  mansions. 

I  have  chosen  my  text  because  of  the  meaning  which 
Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  gave  it  in  a  little  booklet, 
whose  exact  name  I  have  forgotten.  "The  foxes,  the 
little  foxes  that  spoil  the  vines,"  were  the  little  sins  that 
destroy  life.  It  is  those  little  foxes  about  which  I  wish 
to  speak  to  you  to-day.  The  vines  are  your  lives,  which 
should  bear  precious  fruit. 

The  work  of  man  and  woman  in  the  world  is,  in  the 
very  nature  of  it,  different  in  many  points.  The  great 
virtues  of  the  man  are  strength  and  courage.  The  man 
who  has  not  strength  and  courage  to  face  the  world,  to 
conquer  its  obstacles,  is  of  necessity  a  failure.  The 
great  virtues  of  the  woman  are  grace  and  purity.  The 
woman  who  does  not  bring  charm  into  her  surroundings, 
who  does  not  give  to  them  a  gracious  touch,  a  woman 
who  is  not  modest  and  pure  in  thought  and  deed,  fails 
to  achieve  the  work  for  which  she  came  into  the  world. 
The  special  work  of  man  and  woman  in  the  world  I  may 
perhaps  illustrate  by  the  figure  of  the  house  and  home 
building.  It  is  the  man's  part  to  build  the  house.  You 


Little  Foxes  197 

do  not  expect  the  woman  to  wield  the  hammer  or  the 
saw,  to  quarry  and  shape  the  stone,  to  carry  the  hod. 
These  are  the  works  of  man.  He  builds  the  house.  His 
is  the  outward  part,  which  catches  your  eye  as  you 
move  through  the  street.  Of  the  house  the  woman 
makes  a  home.  She  brings  into  it  that  grace  and  charm 
which  make  it  habitable.  Her  work  in  making  the 
home  is  as  important  as  the  man's  work  in  building  the 
house;  almost  I  had  said,  the  work  of  the  woman  is 
the  more  important  of  the  two.  But  while  this  is  so, 
it  is  also  true  that  woman's  work  is  in  general  the  least 
seen  work ;  and  so  there  must  be  a  reticence  and  mod- 
esty about  the  woman's  life  and  ways.  The  things  she 
does  are  not  exposed  to  view  to  every  one  who  passes 
through  the  street.  A  man's  work,  rough  and  strong, 
stands  without  for  all  to  see  and  touch  and  handle. 
Hers  is  within,  to  be  seen  and  enjoyed  by  intimates 
only.  The  man's  work  is  more  tangible,  the  woman's 
more  intangible. 

What  is  true  of  the  building  of  a  house  and  home  is 
true  of  the  spheres  of  man  and  woman  throughout. 
In  the  struggle  to  earn  daily  bread  there  are  fields,  of 
course,  in  which  the  two  come  in  competition.  It  is 
not  always  possible  to  distinguish  at  every  point  the 
inner  from  the  outer.  The  general  distinction  is,  how- 
ever, a  plain  one. 

And  now,  because  man's  work  and  woman's  work, 
man's  nature  and  woman's  nature,  man's  place  in  the 
world  and  woman's  place  in  the  world  differ  thus, 
therefore  also  their  temptations,  to  some  extent  cer- 
tainly, are  different,  their  religion,  to  some  extent,  is 
different.  It  is  the  part  of  each  to  carry  Christ  into 


198  Modern  Christianity 

every  act  of  life.  Each  must  apply  His  principles,  His 
life  to  his  or  her  life  and  conduct;  but  the  application 
is  different.  Perhaps,  for  this  reason,  the  things  I  am 
going  to  try  to  say  to  you  would  be  better  said  to  you 
by  a  woman,  as  they  touch  those  things  which  more 
particularly  concern  a  woman's  life;  and  yet,  sometimes 
it  is  well  that  a  man  should  bring  a  message  to  women, 
just  as  that  women  should  bring  their  message  to  man. 
The  woman's  message  to  man  is  usually  given  in  the 
home  training,  in  the  personal  intercourse;  the  man's 
in  the  more  open  and  public  method  of  speaking,  not 
to  the  individual  but  to  the  mass;  and  so  I  must  give 
my  message  to  you. 

Now,  I  take  it  that,  because  of  the  particular  condi- 
tions of  the  life  of  women,  the  smaller  things  affect  her 
more  than  they  do  the  man.  It  is  possible  for  him  to 
get  away  from  the  petty  annoyances  as  a  woman  can- 
not. His  larger  outside  interests  render  him  less  likely 
to  turn  his  thoughts  in  upon  himself.  The  small  things, 
it  is  true,  affect  us  all  and  many  a  life  is  made  or  marred 
by  the  little  things,  which  seem  so  insignificant  that 
we  are  apt  to  disregard  them.  It  would  be  well  for  all 
of  us  if  we  realised  more  fully  that  religion  must  enter 
into  these  things  also;  that  Jesus  Christ  cared  for  the 
very  small  things  of  life,  as  well  as  for  the  great;  that 
God  Almighty  makes  and  is  concerned  with  the  little 
thoughts,  the  little  words,  the  little  deeds.  "Not  a 
sparrow  falleth  to  the  ground  without  the  will  of  your 
Father  in  Heaven";  "The  hairs  of  your  head  are  all 
numbered";  and  when  God  gave  His  only  begotten 
Son  to  take  upon  Himself  the  nature  of  man,  He  was 
born  as  a  little  babe  in  the  house  of  very  poor  and  lowly 


Little  Foxes  199 

people,  whose  whole  life  was  made  up  of  the  small  and 
insignificant  things.  It  is  the  little  foxes  which  are 
most  apt  to  destroy  the  vines  of  your  life  and  prevent 
them  from  bearing  the  fruits  of  joy  and  holiness  and 
peace,  which  God  meant  them  to  bear  for  you  and  for 
the  world.  The  greater  things  are  more  easily  seen. 
People  understand  their  wickedness  and  wrong.  The 
little  things  are  overlooked.  We  say  they  are  nothing. 
It  seems  to  us  that  God  cannot  come  into  those  things. 
Let  me  name  a  few  of  the  little  foxes. 

I  think  one  little  fox  that  I  have  seen  destroy  a  good 
many  tender  vines  is  untidiness,  lack  of  neatness.  How 
sweet  it  is  to  see  a  girl  careful  about  her  person,  careful 
about  her  surroundings,  pleasant  to  look  at,  pleasant 
to  deal  with.  It  requires  exertion,  it  requires  thought, 
it  requires  attention:  but  it  is  well  worth  it  all.  Go 
into  a  household  where  the  mother  or  the  daughters 
or  the  sisters  are  neat  and  tidy,  where  everything  is 
clean  and  sweet.  Many  a  man  craves  a  home  like  that 
and  cannot  find  it.  Many  a  man  is  driven  out  of  his 
home  by  the  lack  of  tidiness,  neatness,  there.  Go  into 
a  shop  and  see  the  girl  at  the  counter  who  is  tidy  and 
neat  in  her  person  and  her  ways;  that  is  the  one  with 
whom  the  customer  likes  to  deal.  Well,  as  I  have  said, 
it  means  effort,  it  means  sometimes  a  little  self-denial 
in  other  things,  to  achieve  just  that  tidiness  and  neat- 
ness. Oh !  how  many  lives  of  men  and  women  both  have 
I  seen  hampered  by  just  the  lack  of  cultivation  of  this 
one  of  those  little  graces  which  woman  was  meant  to 
bring  into  the  world.  God  meant  that  she  should 
fill  the  world  with  grace  and  beauty  and  charm,  and 
when  she  fails,  one  of  God's  best  gifts  is  taken  away. 


200  Modern  Christianity 

It  is  a  little  thing,  and  yet  it  means  so  much.  That  is 
the  first  of  my  little  foxes. 

And  there  is  another  little  fox  that  comes,  I  think, 
from  the  same  neighbourhood;  and  that  is  the  little 
fox  called  carelessness.  How  exasperating  it  is  to  have 
dealings  with  a  person  who  is  careless,  drops  this  here 
and  loses  that  there,  never  knows  where  anything  is. 
How  much  discomfort  is  brought  into  the  world  by  it. 
Ah !  the  careless  person  rarely  realises  all  the  pain  and 
trouble  that  she  causes.  She  does  not  understand  why 
people  do  not  like  to  have  her  touch  their  things,  why 
they  do  not  want  to  have  her  about.  That  is  another 
little  fox  that  spoils  the  vines  of  our  life  and  prevents 
that  life  from  bearing  fruits  of  joy  and  peace  for  our- 
selves and  those  about  us. 

There  is  another  little  fox  of  the  same  brood,  which 
is  called  unreliability.  "Oh  yes,  I  will  do  this,"  and  it 
is  not  done;  "So  and  so  told  me  so";  and  what  so  and 
so  really  told  was  something  quite  different.  Promises 
broken,  not  because  there  is  intention  of  falsehood ;  un- 
true statements  made,  not  for  the  direct  purpose  of 
deceit.  Oh !  it  means  so  much  to  be  reliable  in  word  or 
deed,  that  one  may  know  that  when  you  say  you  will 
do  a  thing,  it  will  be  done;  that  when  you  say  a  thing  is 
so,  it  is  just  exactly  as  you  tell  it.  I  could  tell  you  of 
great  injury,  great  calamities,  which  have  come  from 
the  work  of  those  little  foxes  of  unreliability  and  care- 
lessness. Every  day  of  my  life  I  see  about  me  vines 
that  have  been  hurt,  if  not  altogether  ruined,  by  the 
ravages  of  those  little  foxes. 

And  now  let  me  mention  another — tactlessness. 
How  delightful  is  a  person  who  has  what  we  call  tact. 


Little  Foxes  201 

1  do  not  know  how  to  define  tact  exactly,  but  every  one 
knows  what  tact  is.  The  person  who  knows  how  to 
put  you  at  your  ease;  not  to  speak  about  the  wrong 
thing;  to  speak  about  the  right  thing;  to  see  at  this 
moment  and  not  to  see  at  that  moment.  It  is  thought- 
fulness  put  into  practice  in  an  almost  unconscious  way 
in  the  little  affairs  of  life;  for  a  person  may  mean  to  be 
very  thoughtful  and  yet,  lacking  tact,  do  or  say  just 
those  things  which  should  not  be  done  or  said.  Tact 
is  the  power  of  feeling  the  persons  about  you.  We  all 
of  us  see  one  another's  bodies,  we  hear  one  another's 
words.  It  is  another  thing  to  come  in  touch  with  the 
soul  behind,  to  feel  that  person.  That  is  the  gift  of 
tact.  Gift?  Yes,  to  some  persons  it  is  a  gift;  but  it  is 
a  gift  that  may  be  cultivated,  cultivated  by  the  effort 
to  put  ourselves  into  the  place  of  those  about,  to  think 
one's  self  into  their  thoughts,  into  their  needs,  so  that 
we  do  not  impose  ourselves  upon  them.  There  is 
nothing  more  gracious  than  tact.  It  is  a  thing  to  be 
proud  of,  a  thing  to  be  striven  for,  a  thing  which,  to 
some  extent,  we  can  all  achieve  if  we  only  care  enough 
for  those  about  us  to  forget  ourselves  a  little  and  try  to 
put  ourselves  in  their  places. 

Now  there  is  another  little  fox  that  hunts  with  tact- 
lessness, and  that  fox  is  egotism.  Egotism  is  different 
from  mere  vanity  or  pure  selfishness.  It  is  natural  for 
a  little  child  to  babble  away  about  itself.  It  measures 
everything  by  itself;  but  what  is  natural  in  a  little  child 
becomes  extremely  unpleasant  and  offensive  in  a  grown 
person.  How  tired  we  do  become  of  the  person  who 
can  talk  about  nothing  except  what  she  has  been  doing, 
what  she  has  to  wear,  whom  she  knows,  what  she  thinks; 


202  Modern  Christianity 

who  never  is  ready  to  hear  what  we  wear,  whom  we 
know,  what  we  think,  what  we  do.  1 1  is  a  very  annoying 
little  fox,  one  that  does  a  great  deal  of  harm  among  the 
tender  vines  of  life.  There  is  nothing  more  precious  in 
life  than  love;  that  people  should  trust  you;  that  people 
should  love  you;  that  people  should  confide  in  you. 
Egotism  destroys  just  that  fruit.  They  cannot  trust, 
love,  or  confide  in  one  whose  whole  talk  and  apparently 
whole  nature  is  centred  in  herself.  Tactlessness  and 
egotism— yes,  these  surely  and  perhaps  all  the  little 
foxes  that  I  have  been  speaking  of  are,  you  may  say, 
expressions  of  cue  great  sin,  and  that  is  selfishness. 
But  I  am  not  dealing  with  the  great  underlying  sins. 
I  am  dealing  with  the  little  foxes. 

I  think  the  worst  den  of  those  little  foxes  is  at  the 
root  of  our  tongues.  There  dwells  a  mother  fox,  who 
has  a  large  brood  of  little  foxes  that  do  incalculable 
harm.  Do  you  remember  what  St.  James  says  about 
the  tongue?  "It  is  a  little  matter  and  boasteth  great 
things.  Behold,  how  much  wood  a  little  fire  burns  up." 
Then,  you  know,  he  says  that  the  tongue  is  the  hard- 
est of  all  things  to  be  controlled.  Oh,  how  much  mis- 
chief our  words  do!  Things  have  gone  wrong  with  us, 
we  are  not  feeling  very  well,  some  annoying  customer 
has  come  in  and  upset  us  by  her  thoughtlessness,  things 
were  not  right  at  home,  the  weather  is  very  trying. 
Whatever  it  is,  we  are  upset;  and  what  do  we  do?  We 
vent  our  unpleasant  feelings  in  sharp  words  toward 
some  one  about  us  and  near  us,  a  quite  innocent  per- 
son, who  is  not  in  the  least  responsible  for  our  condi- 
tion. We  say  some  little  barbed  word  of  sarcasm.  We 
sneer  at  some  little  fault  or  failing.  We  try  to  hurt  the 


Little  Foxes  203 

feelings  of  some  one  else.  Where  we  ought  to  have 
brought  love  and  kindness,  we  bring  malice  and  hate. 
Perhaps  we  make  an  enemy  out  of  some  one  who 
might  have  been  a  friend.  We  turn  away  from  us,  by 
the  unkind  word  we  speak,  some  one  who  perhaps 
needed  our  help  and  would  have  given  us  her  con- 
fidence. We  lose  the  opportunity  of  helping  or  even 
of  saving  a  soul  by  our  action. 

How  much  injury  we  do  with  the  little  unkind  things 
we  say  about  one  another,  some  little  tittle-tattle 
which  we  pass  on!  Possibly  part  of  it  is  true.  It 
might  even  be  that  the  whole  of  it  is  true,  but  we  told 
it  not  for  any  purpose  of  preventing  a  wrong,  of  re- 
forming an  evil,  but  out  of  pure  malice  or  thought- 
lessness; malice,  merely  because  we  like  to  do  a  bit  of 
mischief,  just  as  a  boy  likes  to  break  a  window  or  do 
some  harm  for  the  fun  of  the  thing;  or  thoughtlessness, 
because  we  do  not  really  realise  the  injury  which  our 
words  might  do.  It  is  a  bright  thing  to  say,  it  will 
make  so  and  so  listen,  amuse  so  and  so;  and  so  it  is  said. 
1  think  it  was  Harriet  Moore,  or  perhaps  it  was  Mrs. 
Hemans — I  cannot  say  which,  but  a  famous  English 
woman,— who  is  said  to  have  had  this  custom:  When 
any  one  came  to  her  with  an  unkind  story  about  some 
one  else,  she  would  instantly  put  on  her  bonnet,  and  say : 
"Come,  my  dear,  we  will  go  at  once  and  see  so  and  so/' 
— the  person  about  whom  the  story  was  told, — "and 
tell  her,  so  as  to  get  this  straight."  Few  people  would 
wish  to  retail  gossip  or  tell  malicious  little  stories  to 
one  who  did  like  that,  and  how  much  more  kindliness 
and  love  would  come  into  our  lives  and  the  lives  of 
those  about  us  if  we  were  as  eager  to  tell  the  nice  things 


204  Modern  Christianity 

and  the  kind  things  as  many  of  us  seem  to  be  to  tell 
the  little  spiteful  or  unkindly  things. 

I  might  mention  many  more  of  these  little  foxes- 
peevishness,  irritability,  a  host  more  of  them,  some  of 
which  seem  to  us  often  to  be  closely  connected  with 
our  physical  infirmities.  I  think  that  in  most  cases, 
however,  their  connection  with  our  physical  infirmities 
is  that  we  give  them  a  home  there  and  coddle  them 
up  and  pet  them,  and  then  let  them  get  out  to  destroy 
our  tender  vines  and  the  tender  vines  of  those  about 
us.  You  could,  doubtless,  name  many  more  of  these 
little  foxes  than  I  have  done.  Take  this  verse  and 
think  of  it. 

But  how  are  we  going  to  get  rid  of  all  these  little 
foxes?  We  read  these  words  in  the  lesson  this  afternoon : 
"  If  ye  then  be  risen  with  Christ,  seek  those  things  which 
are  above,  where  Christ  sitteth  on  the  right  hand  of 
God/1  Now,  that  does  not  refer  to  a  rising  after  death : 
it  refers  to  a  rising  in  this  life,  to  a  rising  out  of  malice 
and  hatred  and  pettiness  and  meanness  into  the  glori- 
ous kingdom  of  the  love  of  God.  Open  your  hearts 
and  let  the  sunshine  of  God's  love  stream  in.  Do  you 
know  how,  in  modern  medical  practice,  they  do  just 
that  thing  with  our  homes  and  our  houses?  The  dark, 
stuffy  little  rooms  into  which  God's  sunshine  and  the 
fresh  air  cannot  come  are  hot-houses  of  disease.  All 
sorts  of  germs  breed  in  them.  The  mind  and  heart 
that  shuts  itself  in,  closes  all  its  windows,  won't  let 
the  sunshine  of  God's  love  and  the  breath  of  His  gra- 
cious Spirit  enter  in:  that  mind  and  heart  are  full  of  all 
sorts  of  germs  of  disease.  That  is  where  the  little 
foxes  grow  and  thrive.  People  like  that,  who  shut 


Little  Foxes  205 

themselves  up  in  that  way,  are  full  of  all  sorts  of 
suspicions:  they  see  all  the  evil  that  is  about  them. 
They  develop  a  positive  ingenuity  for  finding  evil  in  the 
hearts  and  lives  of  those  about  them.  They  do  not 
seem  to  think  that  there  is  any  good,  and  if  they  see  a 
good  thing  they  think  it  must  be  done  for  a  bad  mo- 
tive. I  know  there  is  much  evil  all  about  with  which 
you  come  in  contact  in  your  lives;  but  there  is  so  much 
love,  so  much  goodness,  so  much  kindness  in  the 
world!  God  is  here  and  very  close  at  hand.  The 
New  Testament,  with  its  wonderful  story  of  God  in- 
carnate in  man,  Jesus  Christ  walking  about  here  upon 
earth  and  healing  sickness  and  doing  deeds  of  love, 
was  meant  to  make  you  and  me  understand  that  God 
is  all  the  time  right  here  about  us,  walking  among 
us,  waiting  to  be  recognised  and  known,  and  that 
God  is  ready  to  give  you  and  me  a  great  power  to 
heal  sick  souls,  uplift  maimed  and  broken  lives;  that 
He  has  given  it  to  us,  His  children,  if  we  would  but 
use  it. 

Lately  people  have  found  in  Egypt  a  good  many 
ancient  writings,  some  of  which  profess  to  be  the 
Sayings  of  Jesus,  which  are  not  in  the  Bible.  Christ- 
ians in  the  early  days  loved  to  dwell  upon  the  principles 
which  Jesus  taught,  and  try  to  find  new  applications 
for  them.  I  remember  one  of  those  little  sayings,  to 
the  effect  that  if  you  only  turn  up  a  stone,  under- 
neath it  you  will  find  God.  "Seek  and  ye  shall  find." 

There  is  one  story  of  Jesus  which  is  told  in  the  East 
— I  do  not  suppose  it  is  history,  but  I  like  it,  because 
it  expresses  just  that  power  which  Jesus  had  and  which 
every  child  of  God  ought  also  to  display,  of  seeing  and 


206  Modern  Christianity 

finding  good  in  all  about.  Jesus  and  His  disciples 
came  one  evening  to  a  little  town.  The  disciples 
dispersed  to  search  for  a  place  to  lodge  and  food  to 
eat,  and  Jesus,  walking  alone,  came  to  a  group  of  the 
townsfolk  gathered  about  a  dead  dog,  lying  in  the 
street.  Now  the  dogs  there,  you  know,  are  the  sca- 
vengers. They  belong  to  no  one.  They  are  outcasts 
and  unclean.  And  one  said:  "Aha,  the  thief  is  dead." 
And  another  answered:  "Yes,  the  foul  brute!  How 
could  God  have  made  such  uncleanness!"  And  an- 
other said:  "Faugh,  he  stinks.  Let 's  get  away  from 
here/'  And  another,  kicking  him  with  his  foot,  said: 
"Worthless  carrion,  fit  only  to  die  and  rot!  Th'ere 
is  nothing  good  about  the  whole  tribe  of  you."  Then 
they  heard  the  gentle  voice  of  the  stranger  who  had 
approached  them  unawares  saying:  "And  yet  his 
teeth  are  whiter  than  the  whitest  pearls."  So  they 
turned  and  looked  at  Him  for  a  moment,  and  then 
one  said:  "Surely  this  must  be  that  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth, of  whom  we  have  heard,  for  none  but  He  could 
see  good  even  in  a  dead  dog."  There  is  the  Divine 
power:  to  see  the  good  that  is  about  you,  to  find  it, 
express  it,  bring  it  out.  Why,  to  do  that  is  to  create 
good. 

I  have  spoken  to  you  of  these  very  little  things,  the 
little  foxes.  Some  of  you,  I  doubt  not,  dream  of 
the  great  things  of  life.  You  like  to  read  the  novels 
and  stories  that  tell  of  some  beautiful  heroine  in  high 
place,  and  the  things  which  she  said  and  did.  You 
fancy  that  such  a  life  would  be  a  grand  one,  and  per- 
haps you  think  you  could  do  much  good  in  such  a  life 
as  that.  I  think  God  knows  best  our  capacities  and 


Little  Foxes  207 

our  abilities.  Sometimes  He  puts  us  in  a  place  to  test 
us  and  prepare  us  for  something  bigger,  and  some- 
times the  place  which  we  hold  now,  all  unknown  to 
ourselves,  is  the  really  great  and  important  place. 
No  one  can  ever  tell  how  far-reaching  his  words  or 
his  deeds  may  be.  The  private  soldier  on  sentry 
duty  may,  by  his  carelessness,  bring  about  the  destruc- 
tion of  a  whole  army,  or,  by  his  diligence  and  faithful- 
ness, secure  its  safety  and  its  ultimate  victory.  Of  all 
the  lives  which  have  touched  mine  for  good,  few  have 
done  more  for  me  than  the  life  of  a  very  modest  and 
unknown  woman  in  a  town  where  I  once  lived.  I 
knew  there  many  learned  people,  many  who  have 
won  distinction,  some  who  occupy  to-day  the  highest 
places  in  the  nation's  counsels,  but  no  one  in  all  that 
town  did  for  me  what  that  little  dressmaker  did. 


PART  II 

THE  SOCIAL  TEACHING  OF  OUR  LORD 
JESUS  CHRIST 


209 


A  DINNER  PARTY 

ST.  LUKE  xiv.,  1-23 

JESUS  was  invited  by  one  of  the  social  and  reli- 
gious leaders  of  Jerusalem  to  a  dinner  party, 
very  much  as  any  religious  or  social  reformer,  much 
talked  of  at  the  moment,  might  be  invited  to-day. 
The  object  of  such  an  invitation  is  mainly  one  of 
curiosity,  to  observe  at  close  range  the  man  who  is 
attracting  attention,  to  have  an  opportunity  to  see 
him,  to  observe  him  apart  from  his  own  surroundings, 
his  own  chosen  environment.  There  is  something 
amusing  and  interesting  in  this,  possibly  something 
instructive,  but  the  motive  of  the  greater  part  of  the 
guests  on  such  an  occasion  is  one  merely  of  curiosity; 
their  attitude  towards  the  man  invited  to  be  looked 
at  or  heard  is  too  often  contemptuous  and  disdainful, 
as  toward  one  not  in  our  set,  who  has  no  knowledge 
of  our  modes  of  thought  and  conditions  of  life,  and 
who  on  that  account  is  an  alien  and  an  inferior.  We 
are  familiar  with  Jesus'  miracles  of  healing  among 
the  sick  and  suffering;  we  know  Him  in  His  association 
with  fishermen,  with  labourers,  with  publicans  and 
sinners;  we  have  read  His  sermons  and  His  parables 
to  the  multitudes,  the  story  of  His  trial  by  the  high 

211 


212  Modern  Christianity 

priest  and  before  Pilate.  In  all  these  relations  Jesus 
is  familiar  to  us.  I  venture  to  think  that  He  is  quite 
unfamiliar  to  us  as  a  guest  in  the  fashionable  social 
circles  of  His  day. 

We  have,  in  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  St.  Luke's 
Gospel,  a  most  curiously  interesting  and  instructive 
account  of  His  attitude  and  teachings  in  precisely 
such  surroundings.  We  obtain  a  glimpse  of  the  mo- 
tives that  moved  the  guests  at  that  dinner.  We 
hear  the  conversations  that  took  place,  the  questions 
that  were  asked  Jesus  and  His  answers,  and  we  see 
the  hypocrisy  and  sham  religion  of  that  society.  The 
chapter  is  headed  thus:  "And  it  happened  when  He 
went  into  the  house  of  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Phari- 
sees to  dine  on  a  Sabbath  day,  their  object  being  to 
observe  Him."  Then  follows  a  description  of  what 
took  place.  First  of  all  there  appeared  before  Him 
a  sick  man,  sick  with  dropsy.  The  Pharisees  were 
going  to  have  an  opportunity  of  seeing  two  things: 
how  He  healed  sick  people  and  how  He  kept  the  law. 
But  the  tables  were  somewhat  turned  on  them,  when 
Jesus  asked  them  for  their  opinion.  They  were 
doctors  of  the  law.  What  should  He  do?  Was  it 
lawful  for  Him  to  heal  on  the  Sabbath  day?  Now 
their  object  was  not  to  find  the  truth,  nor  to  assist 
Him  in  doing  what  was  right,  but  merely  to  test 
Him.  It  was  a  distinctly  hostile  attitude,  not  a 
friendly  but  an  unfriendly  test;  they  would  like  to 
trip  Him  up  if  they  could.  No  one  answered.  So 
He  took  the  man  and  healed  him  and  let  him  go,  and 
then,  turning  on  them,  quoted  their  own  Scriptures 
and  applied  to  that  case  the  principle  contained  in 


A  Dinner  Party  213 

them.  In  the  Sabbath  law  in  the  Pentateuch  it  was 
provided  that  if  a  man's  cattle  were  in  danger  or  dis- 
comfort, as  if  an  ox  or  an  ass  had  fallen  into  a  pit, 
one  should  relieve  him  on  the  Sabbath  day.  The  prin- 
ciple of  the  Sabbath  was  rest  from  labour  for  those 
who  toiled,  man  or  beast  alike.  It  was  humanitarian 
and  its  humanitarianism  called  for  relief  of  pain  or 
suffering.  The  application  was  unanswerable,  but 
just  on  that  account  it  did  not,  presumably,  increase 
the  kindly  feeling  of  the  Pharisees  toward  this  man, 
not  of  their  own  set,  who,  by  His  enunciation  of  that 
principle  and  its  application,  had  practically  con- 
demned them. 

Just  then  dinner  was  announced  and  they  began 
to  take  their  places.  The  teaching  of  the  Jewish 
law,  which  these  men  professed  to  make  their  standard 
of  life,  was  that  a  man  should  love  his  neighbour 
as  himself.  Any  such  standard  of  life  forbids  mere 
self-seeking.  No  man  can  honestly  profess  such  a  stand- 
ard and  then  seek  to  make  himself  the  first  in  every- 
thing. He  is  bound  to  do  for  his  neighbour  just  as 
much  as  for  himself.  Each  of  these  men  wanted  to 
be  counted  honourable.  Each  wanted  to  have  posi- 
tion, to  be  respected  of  his  fellows.  His  concern  was 
not  that  his  fellows  should  have  position,  respect,  and 
honour,  but  that  he  should  have  it.  It  is  the  common 
struggle  for  precedence,  which,  in  some  form  or  another, 
shows  itself  in  every  worldly  society.  But  here  was 
precisely  the  point:  this  society  professed  not  to  be 
worldly,  but  to  be  based  on  religious  principles,  to 
recognise  a  higher  law  than  the  law  of  get-what-you- 
can-for-yourself.  Manifestly  the  pretence,  in  their 


214  Modern  Christianity 

social  relations  at  least,  was  a  false  one.  The  bulk 
of  those  present  were  not  concerned  with  what  they 
could  do  to  promote  the  pleasure  or  the  social  well- 
being  of  some  one  else,  to  give  honour  to  another; 
they  were  eager  to  promote  their  own  social  well- 
being,  to  secure  honour  for  themselves.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  find  a  place  for  Jesus,  inasmuch  as  He  was  the 
guest  whom  they  all  wished  to  see  and  to  hear.  A 
suitable  place  must  be  found  for  Him,  and  it  became 
necessary  for  the  host  to  ask  one  of  his  guests  to  make 
place  for  Him.  Then  it  was  necessary  to  make  room 
for  this  guest,  by  changing  the  place  of  some  one  else, 
and  so  a  certain  shifting  took  place,  and  naturally 
the  conversation  fell  upon  the  matter  of  precedence. 
How  should  it  be  determined?  Whose  right  was  it 
to  occupy  such  a  place?  Who  was  the  better  man? 
How  are  we  to  count  such  things?  By  and  bye  they 
asked  the  social  reformer,  their  guest,  what  His  idea 
was,  and  He  replied,  as  it  were  in  their  own  language, 
but  with  a  little  irony,  one  cannot  but  think.  Surely 
honour  does  not  come  from  that  which  a  man  does  for 
himself,  or  seeks  for  himself,  but  from  the  respect  which 
others  show  toward  him.  It  is  no  honour  to  any 
man  greedily  to  seize  the  best  place  for  himself.  It  is 
an  honour  to  have  the  best  place  assigned  to  him 
because  of  the  respect  and  veneration  in  which  others 
hold  him.  So  His  answer  was,  in  proverbial  or  half 
proverbial  fashion:  "When  you  are  invited  by  any 
man  to  a  wedding  feast,  do  not  seat  yourself  in  the 
chief  place,  lest  some  one  of  higher  rank  than  you  be 
invited  by  your  host,  and  he  that  invited  you  both  come 
and  say  to  you:  Give  place  to  this  man;  and  then 


A  Dinner  Party  215 

you  begin  with  shame  to  take  the  lowest  place.  But 
when  you  are  invited  go  and  sit  down  at  the  lowest 
place,  so  that  when  he  who  invited  you  comes  he 
may  say  to  you:  My  friend,  come  up  higher.  Then 
you  shall  have  honour  in  the  sight  of  all  that  are 
dining  with  you,  because  every  one  that  exalteth  him- 
self shall  be  humbled  and  he  that  humbleth  himself 
shall  be  exalted." 

Next  they  fell  a-talking  about  the  persons  to  be 
invited  to  their  houses.  Their  religion  enjoined  hospi- 
tality. It  was  a  good  deed,  acceptable  to  God,  when 
one  entertained  a  stranger,  one  who  was  in  need,  who 
had  no  home.  There  is  an  oriental  phrase,  which 
one  hears  to-day  in  the  East,  "My  house  is  yours"; 
everything  is,  as  it  were,  placed  at  the  disposal  of 
the  guest.  There  is  a  certain  piety,  the  recognition 
of  a  religious  obligation,  in  this  service  of  another 
with  one's  house  and  goods.  Maintaining  the  customs 
of  an  earlier  and  more  primitive  age,  the  Jews  of  our 
Lord's  time  counted  hospitality  among  the  sacred 
duties  of  religion.  To  extend  hospitality  was  pleasing 
in  God's  sight;  but  the  spirit  that  lay  behind  the 
injunction  to  hospitality,  which  made  hospitality 
a  religious  act,  acceptable  in  the  sight  of  God,  was 
perverted  in  such  wealthy  society  as  that  of  the  Phari- 
sees with  whom  our  Lord  was  feasting.  No  real 
hospitality  was  shown  in  their  feasts.  They  were 
merely  society  functions.  When  they  turned  to  our 
Lord  and  asked  Him,  as  the  result  of  the  conversation 
which  they  had  been  holding  among  themselves, 
what  was  the  right  thing  to  do  about  inviting  guests, 
who  were  the  right  people  to  be  asked,  our  Lord 


2i  6  Modern  Christianity 

recurred  to  the  foundation  principles  of  hospitality, 
which  they  recognised  as  binding,  answering  still 
with  something  of  the  same  irony  as  before.  They 
thought  that  every  good  deed  would  be  rewarded ;  and 
as  it  is  manifest  that  all  good  deeds  are  not  rewarded 
here  on  earth,  therefore  those  good  deeds  which  are 
not  rewarded  here  shall  be  rewarded  hereafter,  in 
the  kingdom  that  is  to  come.  Jesus  says  to  them: 
"When  you  give  a  supper  or  a  dinner,  do  not  invite 
your  friends,  your  kinsfolk,  or  your  rich  neighbours." 
That  is  not  hospitality:  it^is  done  for  your  own  pleas- 
ure or  to  obtain  invitations  in  return  for  yourself,  to 
secure  a  better  social  rank  for  yourself.  Such  a  deed 
has  its  reward  in  the  return  invitation.  There  is 
nothing  of  religion  in  it,  and  it  receives  no  reward  in 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  because  those  whom  you 
invite  will  invite  you  in  return ;  and  that  will  be  your 
reward.  "But  when  you  give  an  entertainment, 
invite  the  poor,  the  maimed,  the  lame,  the  blind,  and 
you  shall  be  blessed,  because  they  cannot  invite  you 
in  return,  for  you  shall  be  repaid  in  the  resurrection 
of  the  righteous." 

One  pompous  old  Pharisee  who  was  present,  one 
of  those  self -satisfied,  righteous  men  who  are  always 
quite  sure  that  they  and  their  religion  and  their  doings 
are  entirely  satisfactory,  and  that  they  are  going  to 
be  social  and  religious  leaders  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
just  as  they  are  here,  hearing  Him  speak  of  the  resur- 
rection of  the  righteous  in  connection  with  a  supper 
or  feast,  at  once  remarked,  with  all  the  unction  of 
self-satisfied  godliness:  "Blessed  is  he  who  shall  eat 
bread  in  the  kingdom  of  God."  He  was  sure  that 


A  Dinner  Party  217 

he  and  his  friends  were  those  for  whom  the  feast  of 
heaven  was  spread.  Then  our  Lord  told  the  parable 
of  the  supper. 

I  have  analysed  at  some  length  the  conversation 
and  the  happenings  of  this  dinner  party  as  related 
to  Jesus,  following  St.  Luke's  narrative.  In  details 
the  social  relations  of  that  Pharisaic  good  society  of 
Jerusalem  are  different  from  the  social  relations  of 
our  good  society,  but  the  principle  underlying  both 
is  much  the  same.  You  and  I  live  in  the  midst  of  a 
worldly  society,  which  has  largely  converted  the 
Church  to  its  own  worldliness.  We  profess  certain 
fundamental  tenets  of  religion;  the  great  bulk  of  us 
who  profess  them  do  not  pretend  to  practise  them 
when  it  comes  to  our  social  or  society  relations  to  our 
fellow-men.  Religion  is  not  primarily  a  matter  of 
doctrine,  of  ritual,  or  of  sacrament.  It  is  a  matter 
of  life,  it  is  the  carrying  out  in  the  social,  as  well  as 
in  every  other  relation  of  life,  of  the  fundamental 
principles  which  Jesus  Christ  came  to  make  vital 
among  men. 

Those  of  you  who  receive  the  Communion  make, 
in  the  words  of  the  priest  who  speaks  for  you,  this 
pledge  of  yourselves  to  God:  "Here  we  offer  and 
present  unto  Thee,  O  Lord,  our  selves,  our  souls  and 
bodies,  to  be  a  reasonable,  holy,  and  living  sacrifice 
unto  Thee."  It  is  the  fundamental  Christian  con- 
ception of  life  that  our  lives  cannot  be  lived  for  our- 
selves, that  all  we  are  and  all  we  have  are  devoted  to 
God  in  the  service  of  our  fellow-beings.  Our  social 
relations  are  included  in  this  contract  as  well  as  every- 
thing else.  The  person  who  enters  into  social  relations, 


2i8  Modern  Christianity 

who  seeks  acquaintance  and  friendship,  who  gives 
and  takes  invitations,  for  no  other  purpose  than 
social  promotion,  is  precisely  to  that  extent  a  hypocrite 
and  an  unbeliever;  he  makes  a  profession  of  one  thing 
and  does  another,  because  there  is  no  real  belief  in 
his  heart;  and  it  may  be  added  that  such  an  attitude 
deprives  the  person  who  assumes  it  of  the  very  best 
that  there  is  in  life,  of  the  realities  of  life,  true  friend- 
ship, true  love,  the  beauty  and  the  joy  of  service  with 
and  for  those  about  us.  Ambition  is  an  entirely 
legitimate  thing,  from  the  Christian  standpoint,  pro- 
vided that  ambition  be  transmuted  from  the  purely 
selfish  desire  to  achieve  power  or  place  for  one's  own 
amusement  or  glory,  into  the  desire  to  acquire  position 
or  place  or  wealth  so  as  to  do  something,  in  some 
way  to  better,  improve,  or  help  the  world,  or  some 
of  those  who  are  in  it.  It  is  an  honourable  thing  to 
desire  to  be  Mayor  of  this  city,  or  Governor  of  this 
State,  or  President  of  the  United  States,  and  to  strive 
with  all  one's  energy  to  gain  those  offices,  if  it  be  done 
because  the  man  believes  that  he  has  the  capacity 
and  power  thus  to  serve  his  fellows  and  is  filled  with 
the  desire  to  do  so.  There  are  legitimate  social  ambi- 
tions. Each  man  and  each  woman  should  desire  the 
best, — the  highest  culture,  the  highest  refinement; 
and  each  father  and  each  mother  should  desire  for 
their  children  the  best  environment.  But  that  is  a 
very  different  thing  from  the  cold-blooded,  hypocritical 
calculation  of  the  person  who  makes  or  pretends  to 
make  friendships  for  the  sake  of  social  advancement 
and  social  recognition,  who  for  social  advancement 
condones  fraud  and  is  blind  to  immorality,  who  is 


A  Dinner  Party  219 

proud  to  associate  with  rich  scoundrels  and  immoral 
divorcees,  or  to  claim  acquaintance  with  them,  to 
invite  and  be  invited  by  them  for  the  sake  of  social 
position.  Very  little  in  life  is  more  contemptible  than 
the  conduct  of  men  and  women  trying  to  rise,  as  they 
conceive  it,  in  the  social  scale,  who  cast  off  old  friends, 
or  deny  the  ties  of  relationship,  because  such  friend- 
ships and  relationships  would  hinder  them  in  their 
climbing;  but  worst  and  most  contemptible  of  all, 
because  it  is  an  abuse  of  religion,  a  profanation  of  the 
most  sacred  relations  of  life,  is  the  conduct  of  those 
who  seek  membership  in  churches  which  they  esteem 
fashionable  and  become  communicants  there  because 
such  membership  is  the  correct  thing.  Their  case 
is  similar  to  that  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira;  their  lies 
to  God  kill  their  souls.  With  the  mere  abuses  of 
society  as  society,  with  its  selfishness  and  self-seeking, 
with  its  immorality,  I  have  nothing  to  do;  but  only 
with  the  attitude  of  those  who,  professing  the  religion 
of  Jesus  Christ,  deny  that  profession  in  their  social 
relations. 

Our  Lord  in  His  talk  that  afternoon  laid  down  the 
fundamental  law  of  Christian  society.  Seek  not  merely 
nor  first  your  own  welfare,  your  own  promotion  and 
advancement.  As  you  recognise  the  rights  and  the 
virtues  of  others,  as  you  give  them  place,  as  you  help 
those  who  are  unsuccessful,  unfortunate,  unfriended, 
you  show  yourself  a  follower  of  Christ.  When  you 
seek  for  yourself  only,  you  are  His  enemy  and  be- 
trayer. He  indicated  in  His  talk  that  Sunday  after- 
noon, among  those  worldly  and  hypocritical  men, 
the  true  attitude  of  the  possessor  of  wealth  or  oppor- 


220  Modern  Christianity 

tunity.  He  who,  having  wealth,  a  beautiful  house, 
picture  galleries  and  the  like,  yachts,  carriages,  auto- 
mobiles, regards  them  as  his  own,  to  be  used  just  for 
his  own  pleasure,  for  the  promotion  of  his  social  posi- 
tion, the  satisfaction  of  selfish  social  ambition,  has 
failed  to  recognise  the  fundamental  principle  of  the 
stewardship  of  wealth. 

I  heard  a  short  time  since  the  latter  story  of  a 
woman  I  once  knew  who,  after  an  unfortunate  mar- 
riage, had  been  left  to  struggle  for  herself.  She  opened 
a  boarding-house  in  a  college  town.  It  was  very  suc- 
cessful. By  and  bye  she  inherited  a  large  house  in 
the  country;  and  to  that  house  go  to-day,  for  nothing 
or  for  a  small  sum,  working  girls,  tired  clerks,  and 
all  sorts  of  people  who  need  rest  and  refreshment. 
Here  is  a  woman  of  small  means  who  has  entered  into 
the  Saviour's  conception  of  hospitality  as  religious 
service.  What  would  happen  if  Christian  men  and 
women  who  possess  the  means  were,  in  their  various 
degrees,  to  regard  their  houses,  their  gardens,  their 
galleries,  their  yachts,  their  automobiles  and  carriages 
as  a  personal  trust  from  God,  of  which  they  are  the 
stewards? 

But  it  is  not  merely  the  wealthy  for  whom  our 
Lord's  parables  are  intended.  Their  number  is  very 
small.  The  social  teaching  of  this  parable  applies 
to  all  of  us.  It  is  for  the  men  and  the  women  of  small 
means  as  well  as  for  the  men  and  women  of  large 
means.  It  has  to  deal  with  principles  which  concern 
social  relations  in  general;  and  there are,unfortunately, 
plenty  of  people  of  small  means  who  devote  their  all 
to  clothing  themselves  so  as  to  keep  jap  with  their 


A  Dinner  Party  221 

society  or  the  society  which  they  aspire  to,  whose  invi- 
tations and  acceptances  of  invitations  and  whose 
entire  social  relationship  is  based  on  that  principle 
of  self-seeking  which  fell  under  our  Lord's  condem- 
nation. All  about  us  are  those  less  fortunate  than 
ourselves.  To  these  we  owe  a  social  duty,  to  give  to 
them  what  we  have  that  is  better  than  what  they 
have,  if  it  be  but  our  higher  grace  and  higher  culture. 
Merely  to  strive  to  win  for  ourselves  a  place  in  a  social 
circle  above  us,  or  to  maintain  our  place  in  the  social 
circle  which  we  call  our  own,  is  to  renounce  the  fun- 
damental doctrines  of  Christianity  as  applied  to  the 
social  relations  of  life. 

The  attitude  of  at  least  a  large  part  of  the  respectable 
men  and  women  who  constitute  the  Church  is  set 
forth  in  the  parable  which  our  Lord  told  the  guests 
at  that  dinner  party  in  answer  to  the  complaisant 
utterances  of  the  pompous,  contented  Pharisee.  The 
latter  made  use  of  the  common  phraseology  of  his  day, 
when  he  spoke  of  the  kingdom  of  God  as  a  feasting 
in  heaven.  Our  Lord  accepted  the  phraseology  and 
built  His  parable  upon  it.  You  have  accepted  the 
invitation  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  You  are  among 
the  invited  guests,  those  who  profess  the  true  religion. 
You  expect  a  place  with  God  in  due  time  in  His  king- 
dom. Then  comes  the  call  that  the  feast  is  ready, 
you  are  bidden  to  come;  and  you  all  with  one  accord 
begin  to  make  excuse.  I  have  other  things  that  are 
more  important:  I  am  buying  a  piece  of  ground  and 
I  must  complete  the  sale;  I  am  buying  a  yoke  of  oxen 
and  I  must  go  and  test  them ;  my  domestic  relations 
require  my  present  attention.  All  these  things  are 


222  Modern  Christianity 

important  in  themselves.  The  point  is  the  rank 
which  you  assign  them.  You  profess  to  rate  the  spirit- 
ual life  first;  but  in  fact  your  real  life  is  the  material 
life.  You  live  for  yourselves,  for  your  own  advantage, 
your  own  comfort,  your  own  pleasure.  The  spiritual 
realities  are  not  real  to  you ;  they  are  something  vague 
and  remote,  belonging  merely  to  your  church  services 
and  your  professions  of  faith.  This  is  largely  true 
to-day  in  our  churches,  just  as  it  was  true  in*  the 
strictest  and  legally  most  scrupulous  circles  of  the 
Jews  in  the  time  of  our  Lord.  "Many  are  called  but 
few  are  chosen"  is  a  literal  truth  which  we  are  too 
apt  to  interpret  away.  To  be  a  member  of  the  Church, 
to  make  profession  of  religion,  to  conform  in  certain 
regards  to  the  law,  that  it  is  with  which  the  bulk  of 
us  are  content  and  which  we  believe  to  be  Christianity. 
But  that  is  not  Christianity  at  all,  and  it  is  precisely 
to  those  who  stand  in  this  position  that  this  parable 
speaks.  Jesus  appears  in  society  to-day  as  among 
the  Pharisees,  and  society  treats  Him  now  much  as 
it  did  then. 

Carlyle  was  a  rough  man  and  he  spoke  roughly  many 
a  home  truth.  They  tell  of  him  that  on  one  occasion 
a  distinguished  woman,  holding  a  high  position  in 
the  respectable  society  of  the  English  upper  classes, 
expressed  in  his  presence  her  surprise  that  the  Jews 
should  have  renounced  and  crucified  Jesus  Christ. 
"Madam,"  he  said,  "if  He  were  to  appear  in  your 
circle  to-day,  just  as  He  appeared  in  old  Judaea,  poor, 
unlettered,  untutored,  without  social  position  and 
proper  introductions,  you  would  ignore  Him.  You 
would  deny  Him  and  very  probably  you  would  hound 


A  Dinner  Party  223 

Him  to  death  precisely  as  the  Jews  did  Jesus  Christ." 
This  is  largely  true.  In  fact  Jesus  is  here  among  us, 
in  the  society  in  which  we  move,  in  the  men  and 
women  who  make  appeals  for  something  higher  and 
nobler,  for  a  friendship  and  love  that  are  real  and  not 
fictitious,  for  social  relations  which  make  for  the 
development  of  the  spiritual  and  the  ideal,  for  the 
uplift  of  the  weak  and  the  neglected.  Ninety-nine 
out  of  every  hundred  of  us  count  such  persons  anar- 
chists, socialists,  dreamers,  fools,  enemies  of  society, 
precisely  as  the  Pharisees  did  Jesus  and  for  the  same 
reason.  Jesus  is  here  among  us  in  another  form, 
as  He  Himself  has  taught  us,  in  the  poor,  the  sick, 
the  unhappy,  the  unfortunate,  the  degraded.  He  is 
here  in  them  because  whoever  really  gives  to  them 
of  himself,  in  and  through  that  sacrifice  of  himself  in 
love  attains  to  the  sight  and  knowledge  of  God,  present 
here  among  men. 

Ah  well,  much  of  what  I  have  said  will  sound  to 
some  of  you  very  revolutionary.  Yes,  the  most  revolu- 
tionary book  that  was  ever  written  is  the  life  of  Jesus 
Christ.  The  most  revolutionary  teacher  that  ever  lived 
was  Jesus  Christ.  The  most  profound  revolution  that 
can  take  place  in  the  heart  of  any  man  is  that  which 
takes  place  when  he  has  found  Jesus  Christ  in  very 
truth  and  come  to  own  Him  really  as  his  Saviour, — 
when  he  has  accepted  the  life  of  Jesus  as  his  own, 
not  in  outward  profession  merely,  but  in  the  actual 
aim  and  effort  of  his  daily  life. 


A  GOOD  NEGRO 

ST.  LUKE  x.,  36:  Which  of  these  three,  thinkest 
thou,  became  neighbour  to  him  that  fell  among  the 
thieves  ? 

A  JEWISH  theologian  demanded  from  our  Lord  an 
answer  to  the  great  school  question:  "What 
shall  a  man  do  to  inherit  eternal  life?"  Jesus  asked 
him  in  turn,  as  one  skilled  in  theology:  "What  is 
written  in  the  Law?"  The  theologian  answered  Him 
in  that  admirable  summary  of  the  Law  which  we 
use  in  our  Communion  service:  "Thou  shalt  love  the 
Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy 
soul,  and  with  all  thy  strength,  and  with  all  thy 
mind;  and  thy  neighbour  as  thyself."  The  first 
part  of  this,  you  will  remember,  is  taken  from  the  6th 
chapter  of  Deuteronomy,  the  5th  verse;  the  last 
part,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself," 
occurs  in  the  i8th  verse  of  the  i9th  chapter  of  the 
Book  of  Leviticus.  Our  Lord  replied  substantially: 
"That  is  sound  doctrine:  you  have  answered  aright. 
Do  this  and  you  shall  live."  So  far  the  theologian 
had  been  put  in  the  wrong,  as  it  were.  He  could  find 
no  fault  with  Jesus'  answer.  In  fact,  Jesus  seemed  to 
have  adopted  the  theologian's  answer  as  His  own. 
Anxious  to  set  himself  right,  the  theologian  then 

934 


A  Good  Negro  225 

asked  Jesus  the  test  question:  "And  who  is  my  neigh- 
bour?" Now  you  will  observe  that  in  the  connection 
in  which  the  command,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour 
as  thyself,"  is  found  in  Leviticus,  it  applies  properly 
only  to  the  people  of  Israel.  It  expresses  the  duty  of 
Israelite  towards  Israelite.  "Thou  shalt  not  avenge, 
nor  bear  any  grudge  against  the  children  of  thy  peo- 
ple, but  thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour,"  that  is, 
thy  fellow- Israelite,  "as  thyself."  To  you  and  me  this 
might  seem  sufficiently  narrow,  and  in  point  of  fact 
a  fundamental  fault  of  the  religion  of  Israel  has  been 
the  narrowness  of  its  point  of  view.  It  is,  from  our 
standpoint,  patriotism  rather  than  religion,  and  it  is 
precisely  the  adherence  to  this  narrow  national  and 
racial  religion,  this  Chauvinism,  which  has  made  the 
Jew  an  alien  among  the  nations,  hating  and  hated 
wherever  he  abides,  his  hand  against  all  and  their 
hand  against  him;  because  his  standpoint  is  that  his 
obligation  toward  his  neighbour  is  confined  to  his 
own  people.  The  standard  of  his  relationship  toward 
them  may  be  a  lofty  standard,  but  he  does  not  recog- 
nise a  similar  obligation  toward  those  outside  of  his 
own  race. 

In  our  Lord's  day  the  people  of  Israel  were  divided 
into  two  parts,  the  Samaritans  and  the  Jews.  The 
former  had  their  temple  at  Gerizzim,  by  the  side  of 
Shechem,  the  latter  their  temple  at  Jerusalem.  Each 
of  them  recognised  the  same  Law,  the  five  books  of 
Moses,  which  we  have  in  our  Bible  to-day,  and  each 
cursed  and  denounced  the  other.  So  far  from  re- 
garding his  fellow-Israelites  and  fellow-believers  of 
Samaria  as  neighbours,  the  Jew  regarded  them  as 
is 


226  Modern  Christianity 

heretics  and  schismatics.  His  hatred  toward  them 
was  more  bitter  than  his  hatred  toward  the  outside 
heathen,  and  they  entertained  the  same  feeling  toward 
him.  But  even  within  the  Jewish  church  itself  the 
Pharisees  looked  with  contempt  on  the  unlettered  and 
ignorant  multitude,  who  did  not  understand  the 
niceties  of  the  Law,  and  who  did  not  observe  all  the 
minutiae  which  the  Pharisees  had  read  into  it  and 
interpreted  out  of  it.  These  common  Jews,  the  bulk 
of  the  people,  the  Pharisees  regarded  as  unclean,  so 
that  they  could  not  associate  with  them,  sit  down  in 
their  houses,  eat  meat  with  them,  and  the  like.  Re- 
ligion had  become  to  the  Jewish  theologians  not  a 
vitalising,  harmonising  spirit,  but  a  dry  set  of  rules, 
an  interpretation  of  formulae.  They  had  narrowed 
down  the  obligation  of  neighbourliness.  Their  em- 
phasis was  not  on  that  which  was  really  essential  and 
fundamental  in  the  Law,  love.  Their  emphasis  lay 
on  the  definition  of  the  man  to  whom  love  was  to  be 
shown. 

The  parable  with  which  our  Lord  answered  the 
question,  Who  is  my  neighbour?  turns  the  emphasis 
on  that  which  is  essential  and  fundamental — love. 
If  there  be  real  love  there  is  no  need  of  defining  the 
word  neighbour.  Literally,  as  I  have  said,  the  Samari- 
tans were  Israelites  as  much  as  the  Jews,  but  each 
called  the  other  heretic  and  schismatic.  Each  be- 
longed to  Israel  and  each  acknowledged  the  authority 
of  the  same  sacred  Law,  but  each  anathematised  and 
hated  the  other.  Our  Lord  makes  the  hero  of  His 
parable  the  hated,  heretical,  and  schismatic  Samaritan, 
whom  yet,  under  the  literal  terms  of  the  Law,  the 


A  Good  Negro  227 

Pharisee  was  bound  to  love,  not  hate.  I  wish  I  could 
reproduce  the  setting  of  this  parable.  There  are  few 
weirder  and  more  desolate  spots  on  the  world's  surface 
than  that  road  from  Jerusalem  to  Jericho.  Once  over 
the  Mount  of  Olives  you  leave  vegetation  and  life 
behind  you.  The  mountains  are  as  barren  as  the  face 
of  the  moon.  There  is  no  water,  there  is  not  a  house 
from  the  time  you  leave  the  Apostles'  Well,  just  at 
the  foot  of  the  Mount  of  Olives,  until  you  reach  Jericho. 
You  descend  almost  4000  feet.  Leaving  Jerusalem 
in  mid-winter,  with  the  snow  on  the  ground,  when  you 
reach  Jericho  you  may  be  in  mid-summer,  with  palms 
and  oranges  growing  all  about  you  and  the  heat 
at  mid-day  almost  intolerable.  You  are  1300  feet 
below  the  level  of  the  sea,  and  the  great  weight  of 
the  air  rests  upon  you  like  a  pall;  you  are  suffocated 
beneath  an  unseen  blanket.  Something  of  this  oppres- 
sion, this  burden  of  the  atmosphere,  you  begin  to 
feel  as  you  descend  the  road,  long  before  you  reach 
Jericho.  This,  with  the  absolute  lifelessness  of  the 
wild  and  barren  region  through  which  that  road 
passes,  the  glaring  whiteness  of  the  chalk  rocks,  that 
almost  blinds  you,  the  strange,  fantastic,  and  unworldly 
shapes  of  the  desolate  mountain  ridges  and  valleys 
about  you  exert  a  depressing  effect  upon  your  mind. 
It  requires  nerve  to  retain  one's  courage  on  that  road, 
in  presence  of  danger  or  difficulty.  And  that  wild 
mountain  region  between  Jerusalem  and  Jericho  has 
always  been  a  favourite  resort  of  robbers.  Because 
no  one  lives  there,  bandits  have  found  it  a  fit  place  in 
which  to  ply  their  trade.  At  almost  any  period  during 
the  centuries  the  story  of  the  poor  fellow  that  fell 


228  Modern  Christianity 

among  thieves  might  well  have  been  enacted  there. 
It  was  because  of  the  infamous  reputation  of  this  road 
for  robbery  that  our  Lord  selected  it  as  the  place  of 
His  tale.  The  particular  incident  on  which  He  bases 
His  story  may  well  have  been  an  actual  fact,  known 
to  every  citizen  of  Jerusalem,  and  as  such  having  a 
personal  application.  A  poor  fellow  was  robbed,  beat- 
en, stripped  of  his  clothes,  and  left  half  dead  on  that 
inhospitable  road,  with  no  house  near  at  hand — sure 
death  to  him  unless  some  kindly  traveller  would  take 
him  up  and  carry  him  to  Jerusalem  or  to  Jericho. 
By  and  bye  there  came  along  a  priest,  symbol  of  the 
God-fearing,  law-abiding  citizen  of  Jerusalem.  The 
very  profession  of  his  life  was  religion.  He  lived 
through  and  for  religion.  But  he  simply  left  the  poor 
sufferer  lying  where  he  found  him  and  hurried  on. 
The  Levite  who  followed  him,  and  who  was  almost 
equally  a  type  of  the  respectable,  God-fearing,  law- 
abiding  citizen  of  Jerusalem,  who  above  all  men 
should  know  and  fulfil  the  law  of  loving  his  neighbour 
as  himself,  did  the  same. 

Now  it  is  very  easy  to  condemn  the  action  or  rather 
inaction  of  these  two  men.  I  think  the  ordinary 
reader  does  not  understand  their  temptation,  because 
he  does  not  appreciate  the  conditions  of  that  road. 
It  was  a  dangerous  place  to  pass  through  at  the  very 
best.  Delay  meant  a  considerable  increase  of  that 
danger.  The  very  condition  of  the  man  that  lay 
there  on  the  road  was  evidence  of  the  presence  in 
their  immediate  neighbourhood  of  a  band  of  robbers, 
against  whom  neither  priest  nor  Levite  could  defend 
himself.  To  pick  up  the  man  and  carry  him  along 


A  Good  Negro  229 

meant  a  retarded  journey,  with  an  increased  chance 
of  their  own  robbery.  Each  of  them  presumably  had 
a  donkey,  on  which  he  carried  his  bed,  that  is,  his 
blankets,  and  a  few  personal  effects,  together  with  a 
jar  of  water.  This  beast  he  sometimes  rode,  some- 
times he  walked  by  his  side.  With  him  he  could  move 
rapidly  and  hence  more  readily  escape  the  danger. 
If  he  stopped  and  took  up  the  wounded  man,  first  of 
necessity  binding  up  his  wounds,  he  could  only  go  for- 
ward very  slowly.  Now  why  should  he  expose  him- 
self to  such  risk?  It  was  almost  certain  that  within  a 
couple  of  hours  at  the  very  most  a  caravan  would 
come  along,  to  which  delay  would  mean  no  danger, 
in  which  were  plenty  of  beasts  who  could  carry  the 
man,  and  plenty  of  men  who  could  easily  lift  him  up 
and  who  could  and  would  undoubtedly  care  for  him. 
As  a  matter  of  simple,  common  sense,  why  should  he 
expose  his  life  and  his  goods  for  this  man,  about  whom 
he  knew  nothing,  when  within  two  or  three  hours  at 
the  outside  others  would  undoubtedly  be  passing  who 
could  and  would  take  care  of  him  very  much  better 
than  he  could  ?  You  must  not  think  of  the  priest  and 
Levite  as  wantonly  bad  men.  Put  yourself  in  their 
place.  What  would  you  do  under  such  circum- 
stances, and  what  do  you  do  under  circumstances  which 
are  in  principle  identical?  This  is  precisely  what  our 
Lord  meant  us  to  do  with  the  parable,  to  apply  it  to 
ourselves. 

Permit  me  to  tell  you  a  story  out  of  my  own  ex- 
perience. I  was  a  little  boy,  in  an  agony  of  pain,  lying 
by  the  roadside,  on  the  outskirts  of  the  New  England 
town  of  Great  Harrington .  I  had  been  thrown  from 


230  Modern  Christianity 

my  horse.  My  ankle  had  been  dislocated.  I  could 
not  stand  nor  walk.  My  horse  had  run  away  and  I 
was  a  mile  or  so  from  my  home.  It  was  toward  the 
latter  end  of  the  afternoon.  By  and  bye  a  respectable, 
well-to-do  farmer,  a  godly  man  and  one  of  the  pillars 
of  the  church,  I  make  no  doubt,  came  driving  by  on 
his  way  out  of  the  town  back  to  his  home  on  the  Egre- 
mont  Plains.  He  stopped  and  looked  at  me,  but  when 
asked  to  turn  his  waggon  around  and  take  me  back  to 
my  home  .in  the  town,  he  refused.  Somebody  would 
be  coming  along  from  the  other  direction  before  long 
and  would  take  me  in;  he  could  not  stop.  Two  or 
three  of  these  good  farmers  treated  me  in  this  way. 
I  remember  especially  one  of  them  who  was  quite 
inquisitive.  He  had  never  seen  a  foot  twisted  around 
at  right  angles  to  its  proper  position,  as  mine  was,  and 
he  was  interested  in  examining  it;  so  he  handled  and 
squeezed  it,  causing  me  exquisite  torture,  while  I  let 
him  do  it,  trying  my  best  to  bear  it  without  a  cry, 
in  the  hope  that  then  he  would  pick  me  up  and  take 
me  home.  But  it  was  the  same  old  story.  He  had 
no  time.  Some  one  else  would  be  coming  pretty  soon. 
Some  one  else  did  come  pretty  soon — two  poor  old 
coloured  men  in  a  ramshackle,  broken-down  rig,  driv- 
ing a  broken-winded,  rickety  horse.  They  had  quite 
as  far  to  go  as  those  farmers.  They  were  not  re- 
spectable and  godly  members  of  society.  The  Egre- 
mont  farmers  were  much  more  nearly  of  my  own  class 
and  my  own  religion,  my  own  way  of  training,  my  own 
way  of  looking  at  life  than  those  poor  negroes.  But  I 
do  not  remember  that  it  was  necessary  even  to  ask 
the  latter  for  help.  They  seemed  to  sense  my  pain 


A  Good  Negro  231 

and  my  need  without  words.  They  turned  their  old 
waggon  around  at  once  and  took  me  in,  and  I  have 
never  forgotten,  and  I  hope  I  never  shall  forget  as 
long  as  I  live,  the  tender  sympathy  which  those  poor 
old  fellows  showed:  one  of  them  driving  his  horse 
toward  the  town  as  fast  as  he  could,  so  as  to  save  me 
every  moment  of  pain  he  might,  and  the  other  holding 
me  as  well  as  he  could  to  save  my  foot  from  jarring, 
and  trying  to  comfort  me  in  all  sorts  of  quaint  and 
queer  ways,  calling  me  "honey,"  "poor  little  lamb," 
and  the  like. 

Now  which  of  those  men  do  you  think  was  neighbour 
to  me?  The  godly  and  righteous,  hard-working,  well- 
to-do  farmers  from  the  Egremont  Plain,  or  those  two 
poor,  miserable,  forsaken  coloured  men  for  whom  none 
of  us  had  a  good  word? 

In  that  story  of  the  good  Samaritan  our  Lord  laid 
His  finger  upon  the  danger  of  our  life.  Our  religion, 
our  respectability,  are  apt  to  become  fundamentally 
selfish.  It  is  of  ourselves  we  think.  Our  righteousness 
is  for  our  own  well-being.  But  beyond  and  above 
mere  righteousness  there  is  something  which  is  the 
very  heart  of  the  universe,  the  very  essence  of  God 
Almighty,  and  that  is  love.  No  man  whose  religion 
is  centred  upon  himself,  whose  life  means  the  pro- 
motion of  his  own  well-being,  has  entered  into  the 
kingdom  of  God,  to  use  Christ's  frequent  words,  for 
the  very  atmosphere  of  that  kingdom  is  love. 

Now  the  man  who,  seeing  a  boy  lying  by  the  road- 
side suffering  agonies,  can  be  so  wrapped  up  in  himself 
and  his  own  affairs  and  his  own  duties  and  respon- 
sibilities that  he  does  not  respond  with  sympathy  to 


232  Modern  Christianity 

his  need,  that  the  boy's  suffering  does  not  appeal  to 
him  as  a  thing  which  must  be  relieved,  which  he  must 
care  for  at  once,  without  regard  to  his  own  incon- 
venience, is  a  man  who  has  not  entered  into  the  real 
spirit  of  the  religion  of  Christ.  So  in  our  Lord's  story 
the  priest  and  the  Levite,  whose  consideration  of 
themselves  was  paramount,  who  in  the  presence  of 
a  suffering  fellow-being  could  coldly  and  selfishly 
reason  with  regard  to  their  own  danger,  their  own 
inconvenience,  their  own  rights,  and  the  precise  degree 
of  their  obligation,  were  men  who  had  failed  to  grasp 
the  fundamental  thought  of  "loving  their  neighbour 
as  themselves." 

And  now  let  us  apply  that  for  one  moment  to  our- 
selves. It  is  precisely  the  attitude  of  the  priest  and 
Levite  which  I  think  I  may  safely  say  the  bulk  of 
professing  Christian  men  and  women  take.  You  and 
I  do  not  go  down  the  road  from  Jerusalem  to  Jericho 
and  find  a  man  who  has  literally  fallen  among  thieves. 
Our  obligations  of  love  present  themselves  in  a  different 
way,  I  fancy,  but  the  principle  is  the  same.  I  but 
repeat  the  experience  of  every  rector  of  a  parish  when 
I  say  that  the  number  of  people  who  are  actually 
ready  to  do  work  in  a  parish  is  small,  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  the  number  of  professing  Christians,  or 
even  to  the  number  of  communicants  in  that  parish. 
Men  and  women  who  seem  to  the  rector's  eye  to  be  in 
a  position  to  render  service  in  the  work  of  the  parish 
declare  themselves  quite  unable  to  undertake  such 
work.  Possibly  they  recognise  the  need  of  the  work, 
but  it  seems  to  them  that  some  one  else  ought  to  do  it 
and  not  they;  and  it  is  often  precisely  those  who  seem 


A  Good  Negro  233 

best  able  to  undertake  the  work  of  God  who  would 
leave  it  to  others. 

The  same  thing  is  true  with  regard  to  those  profes- 
sions which  call  for  sacrifice  and  service.  The  ministry 
is  not,  as  a  rule,  well-paid.  First  there  is  a  long  period 
of  study  and  training  which  must  be  gone  through. 
That  is  expensive.  Then,  after  a  man  enters  the  minis- 
try, the  opportunities  of  large  remuneration  are  small. 
You  would  think  that,  under  the  circumstances,  the 
Church  might  call  on  those  persons  to  whom  a  salary 
is  not  an  absolute  necessity,  who  have  some  means  of 
their  own,  to  enter  the  ministry.  How  large  a  number 
of  young  men  enter  the  ministry  from  the  ranks  of  the 
wealthy  or  well-to-do  parishioners  in  any  parish? 

And  how  about  the  ministry  of  women?  How 
many  young  women  from  similar  families  become  dea- 
conesses or  nurses,  or  give  themselves  to  mission  work 
or  whatever  else  of  the  same  sort?  The  same  thing 
which  prevents  them  from  answering  this  call,  the  in- 
convenience of  it,  the  danger  of  it,  the  burden  of  it, 
affects  the  same  classes  when  it  comes  to  work  of  any 
sort.  It  appears  to  be  the  men  and  women  who  have 
to  work  the  hardest  for  their  daily  bread  who  take  up 
and  do  the  work  of  the  Church. 

But  the  work  of  Christ  is  not  confined  to  parish 
work,  or  the  ministry,  or  deaconesses,  or  nurses,  or 
missions.  There  is  an  immense  work  for  betterment, 
for  the  uplift  of  our  fellow-beings,  calling  for  volun- 
teers in  this  city  of  New  York.  It  cries  to  us  for  con- 
tributions of  our  money,  but  above  all  it  cries  to  us 
for  our  personal  service.  If  you  could  stir  one  half 
of  the  Christian  men  and  Christian  women  of  this  city 


234  Modern  Christianity 

to  actual  love  of  Christ,  showing  itself  in  the  service 
of  their  fellow-men,  the  existing  conditions  of  evil 
would  largely  be  remedied.  Ask  any  man  or  any 
woman  who  is  struggling  to  remedy  some  great  wrong, 
to  help  those  who  are  in  need,  what  sort  of  assistance 
he  receives  from  his  fellow-Christians,  and  he  will 
almost  always  tell  you  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  find 
workers  who  will  really  work,  who  will  really  recognise 
the  obligation  themselves  to  serve;  and  that  of  those 
who  do  engage  in  the  work  the  average  man  or  woman 
is  apt  to  think  that  when  he  attends  a  committee 
meeting  once  a  month  he  has  done  all  that  can  be 
expected  of  him.  Take  the  lists  of  the  various  benevo- 
lent societies  and  organisations  in  this  city  and  run 
over  them.  You  will  find  the  same  names  appearing 
over  and  over  again,  for  the  simple  reason  that  out 
of  the  great  mass  of  Christian  men  and  women  there 
is  such  a  very  small  proportion  who  are  willing  to 
accept  the  responsibilities  and  obligations  of  service, 
such  a  very  small  number  who  in  practice  show  that 
love  which  counts  personal  pleasure  and  personal  com- 
fort as  a  small  thing  in  comparison  with  the  oppor- 
tunity to  serve  one's  fellows  in  need  or  trouble. 

Ah  well,  it  may  be  said,  that  is  not  the  only  way 
in  which  service  is  rendered.  No,  it  is  not.  The  best 
service  of  all  is  that  which  is  rendered  by  one  individ- 
ual to  another,  quite  outside  of  the  lines  of  organisation 
and  institution.  I  have  spoken  of  the  other  only  as 
a  gauge,  a  test  of  conditions.  We  should  not,  in  fact, 
need  any  such  organisations  or  institutions  if  even  the 
majority,  perhaps  even  one  third,  of  the  members  of 
our  churches  were  full  of  the  true  spirit  of  love  and 


A  Good  Negro  235 

service.  If,  instead  of  asking  the  question:  Who  is 
my  neighbour?  How  little  am  I  compelled  to  do? 
What  is  my  necessary  obligation?  we  Christian  men 
and  women  were  really  to  ask:  To  whom  can  I  show 
myself  a  neighbour?  Where  is  there  one  whom  I 
can  help?  there  would  be  no  need  of  orphan  asylums, 
societies  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children, 
Child  Labour  Committees,  and  much  more  of  the  same 
sort.  The  conception  of  man's  relation  to  life  which 
Jesus  taught  was  this:  I  am  here  to  serve.  What 
can  I  do?  Jesus  served  His  fellow-men  with  all  His 
powers  because  He  really  loved,  because  He  was  the 
expression  of  the  love  of  God;  and  whoever  knows 
Jesus  becomes  on  his  part,  in  his  degree,  an  expression 
of  the  love  of  God.  The  question  to  be  asked,  if  you 
really  wish  to  get  to  fundamentals,  is  not  the  question 
of  the  lawyer,  the  theologian  of  Jerusalem,  Who  is 
my  neighbour,  to  whom  do  I  owe  an  obligation?  but, 
as  Jesus  summed  it  up  in  His  story,  Who  is  there  that 
needs  me,  whom  can  I  help,  to  whom  can  I  be  a  neigh- 
bour? No  man,  the  idea  of  whose  religion  is  the 
saving  of  his  own  soul,  has  begun  to  grasp  the  idea  of 
the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  much  less  to  know  his 
Saviour.  When  a  man  is  concerned  with  saving 
some  one  else,  then  only  has  he  begun  to  enter  into  a 
knowledge  of  the  religion  of  Christ;  then  only  has  he 
begun  to  know  Jesus  as  his  Saviour. 

It  is  a  good  thing  to  be  respectable;  it  is  a  good 
thing  to  have  knowledge ;  it  is  a  good  thing  to  restrain 
and  discipline  oneself  and  keep  one's  passions  and 
desires  under  control;  it  is  a  good  thing  to  achieve 
success,  to  accomplish  results  in  life;  and  it  is  a  good 


236  Modern  Christianity 

thing  to  pray,  to  go  to  church,  to  be  a  communicant ; 
but,  after  all,  that  is  not  religion.  In  the  Christian 
sense  religion  is  love,  the  love  of  God  and  of  our  fellow- 
men,  expressed  in  the  character  and  the  life  of  the 
believer. 

Most  of  us  are  Church  members.  We  are  intelligent : 
we  can  read  and  write.  We  are  refined.  We  are,  if 
not  rich,  certainly  not  poor  in  the  sense  that  we  do 
not  know  where  we  are  going  to  get  our  daily  bread. 
We  may  not  have  all  the  things  that  some  very  rich 
people  have,  but  we  are  prosperous,  if  not  rich,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  great  bulk  of  men  and  women. 
How  did  we  get  those  things?  How  did  we  achieve 
our  present  position?  How  much  of  what  you  are, 
of  what  you  have,  came  from  yourself?  Why,  your 
very  physical  well-being,  the  attributes  of  body  which 
you  have,  are  in  almost  all  cases  what  you  have  in- 
herited from  your  father  and  your  mother.  They  are 
the  result  of  careful  training  by  others  when  you  were 
little.  You  did  not  care  for  yourself  when  you  were 
a  baby.  Your  parents  cared  for  you.  You  did  not 
teach  yourself.  You  were  sent  to  school.  All  these 
good  things  were  provided  for  you.  You  were  brought 
up  in  the  midst  of  decency  and  order  and  self-respect. 
Your  prosperity,  your  well-being,  your  respectability 
are  not  something  which  you  have  achieved.  There 
is  not  one  out  of  fifty  of  us  who  has  won  even  his  re- 
ligion for  himself.  What  we  have  and  what  we  are  is 
largely  the  result  of  what  others  have  done  for  us. 
On  the  foundations  which  others  laid  we  have  built 
something;  but  when  we  count  the  proportion  of  what 
we  have  done  to  what  has  been  done  for  us  in  our 


A  Good  Negro  237 

lives,  I  fancy  that  we  shall  find  it  quite  insignificant. 
Then,  who  gave  you  these  things?  They  are  the  gifts 
of  God,  and  neither  you  nor  I  can  plead  our  decency, 
our  respectability  as  virtues  in  the  sight  of  God.  At 
the  last  what  He  will  ask  us  is:  What  have  you  done 
with  these  gifts  which  I  gave  you?  You  were  my 
favoured  children  to  whom  I  gave  these  good  things, 
that  you  might  play  the  brother  to  these  others  who 
are  lying  wounded  and  suffering  by  the  road  on  which 
you  are  travelling  through  life.  Have  you  stopped  to 
care  for  them,  to  share  with  them  the  good  things 
which  I  gave  you  to  give  to  them?  To  whom  have  you 
been  a  neighbour,  loving  him  as  yourself?  That,  I 
take  it,  is  going  to  be  the  question  asked  us  at  the 
great  day.  There  is  not  one  of  us  to  whom  there 
have  not  come  opportunities  precisely  such  as  came 
to  the  priest  and  Levite.  Did  you  take  the  obligation? 
Are  you  full  of  love,  eager  to  find  some  one  whom  you 
can  help?  Or  have  you  been  willing  to  avoid  obliga- 
tion, to  say:  Someone  else  is  coming  who  can  do  it 
better  than  I?  I  will  leave  it  to  him.  It  is  not  my 
task.  It  would  hinder  and  hamper  me  too  much. 


PALACES  AND  SLUMS 

ST.  LUKE  xvi.,  19-26 

"/""\NCE  upon  a  time  there  was  a  rich  man,  and  he 
\J  was  dressed  in  purple  and  linen  and  feasted 
sumptuously  every  day ;  and  a  poor  man  named  Lazarus 
used  to  be  laid  at  his  gate,  covered  with  sores  and  beg- 
ging to  be  fed  from  the  crumbs  of  the  rich  man's  table. 
Why,  the  very  dogs  used  to  come  and  lick  his  sores. 
And  by  and  bye  the  poor  man  died  and  was  carried 
away  by  angels  up  to  Abraham's  bosom.  Then  the 
rich  man  also  died  and  was  laid  in  the  tomb;  and  in 
hell,  being  in  torment,  he  lifted  up  his  eyes  and  saw  from 
afar  Abraham,  and  Lazarus  on  his  bosom.  And  he 
called  aloud  and  said:  'Father  Abraham,  take  pity 
on  me  and  send  Lazarus  that  he  may  dip  the  tip  of 
his  finger  in  water  and  cool  down  my  tongue,  for  I 
am  tortured  in  this  flame/  But  Abraham  said: 
'Child,  remember  that  you  received  your  good  things 
in  your  lifetime  and  Lazarus  on  his  part  the  evil 
things;  but  now  here  he  is  comforted  and  you  are 
tortured;  and  beside  all  this,  between  us  and  you  a 
great  gulf  is  fixed,  that  they  who  would  pass  over  from 
here  to  you  may  not,  neither  may  they  cross  over  to 
us  from  there/  'Then  I  ask  you,  father/  said  he, 
'that  you  would  send  him  to  my  father's  house,  for 

'38 


Palaces  and  Slums  239 

I  have  five  brethren,  that  he  may  tell  them,  so  that 
they  too  do  not  come  into  this  place  of  torment.' 
But  Abraham  said:  'They  have  Moses  and  the  Proph- 
ets, let  them  hear  them/  And  he  replied:  'Nay, 
father  Abraham;  but  if  one  came  to  them  from  the 
dead  they  will  repent/  Then  Abraham  said  to  him: 
'  If  they  do  not  hear  Moses  and  the  Prophets,  neither 
will  they  be  persuaded  even  though  one  should  rise 
from  the  dead/ ' 

Just  because  you  are  so  familiar  with  this  parable 
I  have  read  it  over  to  you  again  in  a  literal  translation, 
for  the  words  with  which  we  are  too  familiar  sometimes 
fail  to  convey  to  us  their  full  meaning.  It  is  a  very 
simple  story  wonderfully  told.  How  the  brief  de- 
scription of  the  two  men  brings  out  the  difference 
in  their  lives!  The  one  lived  a  life  of  luxury  and  ease, 
clothed  in  the  best,  his  every  meal  a  banquet.  The 
other  lived  a  life  of  squalor,  loathsome  to  look  at, 
covered  with  sores,  his  food  what  the  rich  man  could 
not  use  and  did  not  want,  the  refuse  of  his  kitchen — 
a  poor  outcast,  sunk  so  low,  so  vile  to  see,  that  his 
only  real  comrades  were  the  dogs  of  the  street.  Like 
him  they  lived  on  the  refuse  from  the  rich  man's  table. 
He  and  they  shared  together.  In  the  graphic  words 
of  our  Lord,  they  "licked  his  sores/' 

And  when  these  men  died  the  rich  man  was  buried 
in  a  costly  tomb,  but  there  was  no  tomb  for  the  poor 
outcast.  His  worthless  body  was  put  out  of  the  way 
so  that  it  might  not  defile  the  town,  and  that  was  all, 
from  man's  side.  But  now  begins  the  other  side. 
The  angels  of  God  carried  his  soul  away  from  that  poor 
dishonoured  body,  up  to  the  bosom  of  Abraham. 


240  Modern  Christianity 

The  rich  man's  body,  well  preserved,  lay  in  its  costly 
tomb,  but  the  rich  man's  soul  was  in  torment  in  the 
flames  of  hell.  Hell  consisted  of  two  parts,  separated 
by  a  great  gulf.  In  the  one  part  the  souls  of  the 
damned  were  in  torment,  burned  by  a  never-dying 
flame.  Across  the  gulf,  far  away  and  dimly  seen  by 
them  in  their  agony,  was  the  abode  of  the  blessed, 
the  bosom  of  Abraham,  where  the  true  Israelites  dwelt 
in  paradise,  the  garden  of  joy  and  feasting,  with  the 
great  heroes  and  patriarchs  of  their  race,  Abraham 
Isaac,  and  Jacob.  And  so  this  rich  man  in  his  torment 
beheld  far  away,  in  Abraham's  bosom,  Lazarus,  the 
beggar  that  used  to  lie  at  his  gate.  He  cannot  yet 
forget  his  importance  and  the  importance  of  his 
family.  This  poor  beggar  that  was  seems  to  him  no 
better  than  a  slave,  who  should  be  sent  at  his  will  to 
do  him  service,  and  so  he  calls  out  to  Abraham  to  send 
down  Lazarus  to  dip  his  fingers  in  the  water  and  bring 
him  drink,  for  he  was  bound  among  the  flames  and 
could  not  move.  Then  when  he  finds  that  this  is  im- 
possible, he  calls  on  him  to  send  Lazarus  to  his  father's 
house  to  warn  his  brothers;  for  Dives  was  not  without 
natural  affection.  He  would  not  have  his  brothers 
come  into  this  torment.  He  was  a  man  of  a  sort  not 
uncommon,  proud  of  his  family,  anxious  that  they 
should  have  the  good  things,  both  in  this  life  and  in 
the  hereafter.  But  his  affection  was  limited  to  them. 
It  was  that  affection,  strongly  touched  with  pride 
and  selfishness,  which  men  and  women,  hard  and 
selfish  toward  the  outside  world,  often  bear  toward 
their  family  and  those  who  in  some  way  belong  to 
them. 


Palaces  and  Slums  241 

Now  this  parable  is  not  intended  to  give  us  a  picture 
of  the  next  world.  We  are  not  to  understand  that 
there  is  actually  a  hell  in  which  the  tormented  suffer 
in  fire  and  brimstone,  and  that  there  is  a  paradise, 
separated  by  a  great  gulf  from  this  place  of  torture. 
Our  Lord  is  simply  speaking  to  the  people  in  their 
own  language,  so  to  speak,  precisely  as,  when  He  speaks 
of  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun,  He  is  committing 
Himself  to  no  astronomical  theory.  For  the  purposes 
of  His  teaching  He  takes  their  own  conception  of 
the  next  world.  His  description  of  that  is  valuable 
merely  as  showing  us  what  the  Jews  of  His  day  con- 
ceived to  be  the  condition  of  the  departed  after  this 
life.  Our  Lord  is  not  teaching  us  what  heaven  and 
hell  are  like.  Again,  you  are  not  to  understand  that 
this  poor  man  was  on  earth  a  saint,  a  pious,  holy  man 
who  bore  unmerited  misery  with  patience,  whose 
soul  was  so  purified  by  his  trials  that  therefore  he  was 
taken  unto  Abraham's  bosom.  Lazarus  is  repre- 
sented merely  as  an  utterly  miserable  beggar,  such  as 
one  may  see  to-day  anywhere  in  the  East,  and  as  one 
used  to  see  in  the  streets  of  our  cities  when  some  of 
us  were  young.  There  is  no  question  of  virtue  or 
vice.  It  is  simply  a  question  of  misery.  Similarly, 
the  rich  man  is  not  a  glutton,  as  the  heading  of  this 
chapter  in  our  King  James*  Version  has  it.  That  is 
a  misunderstanding  of  the  very  idea  of  the  parable. 
It  is  not  drunkenness  or  gluttony  that  our  Lord  is 
condemning.  He  shows  us  a  rich  man,  who,  having 
of  the  good  things  of  this  world  a  plenty,  conceives 
of  them  as  his  own,  which  he  may  use  for  his 
own  pleasure  and  his  own  amusement.  It  is  to  be 


242  Modern  Christianity 

presumed  that  Dives  paid  his  way  in  the  church ;  that, 
according  to  the  Hebrew  law,  he  gave  to  the  Lord  his 
tithes,  one  tenth  of  his  income.  Evidently  he  was 
not  uncharitable,  in  the  ordinary  sense  which  that 
word  has  unfortunately  come  to  have  among  us.  He 
was  quite  ready  to  give  away  what  he  did  not  want  to 
a  poor  beggar.  I  suppose  that  Lazarus  may  have 
been  one  of  many  who  lay  at  his  door  and  were  fed 
from  the  crumbs  that  fell  from  his  table;  for  such  men 
were  rather  glad  to  have  a  crowd  of  beggars  at  their 
gate.  It  enhanced  their  importance  and  their  splen- 
dour, and  so  far  from  driving  them  away  they  really 
encouraged  them  to  come  and  lie  at  their  gates  and 
eat  of  their  leavings,  which  were  of  no  use  to  them. 
What,  then,  does  the  parable  mean?  You  are  all 
familiar  with  Lowell's  poem  of  "Sir  Launfal."  That 
is  another  form  of  this  same  parable  of  Dives  and 
Lazarus,  only  with  Dives  converted  at  the  last.  As, 
in  his  vision,  Sir  Launfal  rides  out  of  his  castle  to 
commence  the  search  for  the  Holy  Grail,  he  sees  a 
leprous  beggar  by  the  gate,  begging  an  alms  for  Christ's 
sweet  sake.  He  throws  him  a  purse  of  gold ;  but  there 
is  no  love  in  the  gift.  1 1  is  not  a  gift  given  to  a  brother, 
but  an  alms  thrown  with  averted  head  to  a  loathsome 
outcast,  whose  touch  and  whose  very  presence  are  an 
offence  to  his  soul.  Then  turn  to  the  last  scene  in 
that  vision.  Sir  Launfal  himself  is  poor.  His  life 
has  been  a  failure.  He  has  not  brought  back  in  tri- 
umph the  Holy  Grail.  He  has  lost  his  castle  and  his 
lands,  and  men  spurn  him  as  a  fool  and  a  failure. 
Then,  in  his  poverty  and  loneliness,  he  hears  the  same 
cry  of  the  leper,  begging  an  alms  for  Christ's  sweet 


Palaces  and  Slums  243 

sake,  and  as  he  shares  with  that  loathsome  outcast  the 
poor  crust  and  the  cold  water,  which  are  all  that  he 
has,  in  that  deed  of  true  love,  as  of  one  brother  toward 
another,  he  finds  his  Saviour.  His  eyes  are  opened, 
he  knows  the  Christ,  and  enters  into  the  kingdom  of 
God. 

What  is  condemned  in  this  parable  is  not  gluttony 
or  drunkenness  or  sensuality;  it  is  not  wealth  in  itself. 
It  is  the  man  wrapped  in  luxury  and  self -enjoyment, 
whose  heart  is  hard  and  selfish  toward  the  miserable 
and  needy,  who,  instead  of  conceiving  of  his  wealth 
as  the  means  of  giving  to  them  what  they  have  not, 
uses  it  for  his  own  pleasure  and  that  of  his  family  and 
a  few  chosen  friends,  content  that  the  miserable 
beggar  should  live  on  the  leavings  of  his  feasts.  On 
the  other  side  we  are  shown  the  infinite  pity  and  love 
of  God;  precisely  that  which  our  Lord  sets  forth  in 
His  stories  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  in  this  same 
Gospel  of  St.  Luke.  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like 
a  man  who  had  one  hundred  sheep  and  lost  one.  That 
one  miserable  lost  sheep  counts  to  him  as  more  than  all 
the  ninety  and  nine.  It  is  like  the  woman  who  had 
ten  pieces  of  silver  and  lost  one,  and  lights  the  candle 
and  searches  diligently  through  her  house  until  she 
finds  it,  and  then  calls  all  her  neighbours  and  friends 
to  come  and  rejoice  with  her.  It  is  like  a  father  who 
had  two  sons,  one  of  whom  became  an  outcast.  He 
descended  to  the  lowest  depths  of  degradation  and 
infamy.  He  was  fain  to  eat  with  the  swine  and  fill 
his  belly  with  the  husks  that  were  fed  to  them.  But 
when  he  came  home  and  his  father  saw  him  afar  off, 
he  ran  and  fell  on  his  neck  and  kissed  him;  he  ordered 


244  Modern  Christianity 

him  clothed  in  the  best ;  he  made  a  great  feast  to  cele- 
brate his  return.  He  showed  to  him,  as  it  would  seem, 
an  honour  which  he  had  never  shown  the  son  who 
had  lived  with  him  all  those  years,  dutifully  and  dili- 
gently caring  for  his  inheritance.  It  is  a  picture  of 
God  as  Love,  touched  by  misery  and  suffering,  yearn- 
ing over  the  sufferer  and  gathering  Him  into  His  bosom 
just  because  he  has  need. 

Now  the  conditions  of  life  which  are  pictured  in 
this  parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus  are  enacted  every 
day  before  our  eyes  here  in  this  city  of  New  York. 
On  Fifth  Avenue  you  see  the  houses  of  the  rich.  There 
live  the  men  and  women  who  are  clothed  in  purple 
and  fine  linen,  whose  daily  meals  would  be  to  the 
average  working  man  a  banquet,  who  spend  each  day 
upon  their  pleasures,  their  luxuries,  more  than  the 
ordinary  man  can  earn  in  many  days.  Down  on  the 
lower  east  side  you  find  men  and  women  crowded 
together  in  filthy  and  stifling  quarters,  poor,  squalid, 
and  dirty,  some  of  them  not  knowing  whence  the 
money  is  coming  to  buy  their  daily  bread,  dying  of 
consumption  or  other  similar  preventable  diseases, 
because  they  have  not  the  means  to  procure  the  neces- 
sary food  to  nourish  their  systems  properly,  or  do  not 
know  how  to  take  care  of  themselves  or  their  little 
ones.  These  people  that  live  on  Fifth  Avenue  have 
their  houses  at  Newport,  Lenox,  Mt.  Desert,  on  Long 
Island,  or  on  the  Hudson,  or  at  Tuxedo.  If  they  are 
overtired  with  pleasure  or  business  they  may  run  off 
to  Lakewood.  If  a  cough  develops  or  their  nerves  are 
worn  they  may  take  a  trip  to  Asheville  or  to  Florida, 
or  in  their  yacht  they  may  travel  around  the  world. 


Palaces  and  Slums  245 

These  others  who  live  on  the  lower  east  side  must 
stifle  and  suffer  when  the  hot  waves  come  in  summer. 
They  must  work  in  crowded  rooms  all  day  and  sleep 
on  fire-escapes  or  on  the  roofs  or  in  the  parks  at  night 
to  get  a  breath  of  fresh  air.  Their  babies  die  off  in  such 
weather,  little  children  who  could  be  saved  if  it  were 
only  possible  to  take  them  to  Newport,  to  Tuxedo,  or 
the  like,  if  they  could  only  be  carried  out  to  sea  on  a 
yacht,  if  they  could  only  have  the  needed  care  and 
diet.  The  young  men  and  young  women  who  live 
in  these  homes  work  in  crowded  workshops;  they 
develop  the  germs  of  tuberculosis,  one  gives  it  to 
another,  and  whole  families  are  swept  away,  who 
might  have  been  saved  had  it  only  been  possible  to 
take  them  out  of  their  dark  and  sunless  tenements 
and  to  give  them  a  long  period  of  rest,  with  nourishing, 
plain,  country  food  and  bright  sunshine  and  fresh  air. 
Ah  well,  you  say,  these  persons  who  live  on  Fifth 
Avenue,  who  have  money  and  fine  houses  and  live 
in  luxury,  they  have  worked  for  what  they  have  or 
their  fathers  or  grandfathers  have  worked  for  it. 
They  have  acquired  it  by  self-denial,  self-control,  self- 
restraint,  by  diligent  application,  by  superior  intelli- 
gence and  capacity,  or  by  the  same  qualities  in  their 
parents  who  have  bequeathed  it  to  them.  They  are 
entitled  to  enjoy  what  they  have  won.  The  misery 
and  squalor  that  you  speak  about  are  due  to  the 
shiftlessness  and  the  self-indulgence  and  stupidity  and 
the  sin  of  those  others  who  live  in  the  slums, — of  them 
or  of  their  parents.  To  be  sure  there  are  individual 
cases  where  that  is  not  the  case,  but  in  the  bulk  it  is 
true.  You  have  on  the  one  side  the  prosperity,  the 


246  Modern  Christianity 

wealth  which  is  the  result  of  the  application  of  certain 
social  and  moral  virtues.  You  have  on  the  other  side 
the  misery  and  degradation  which  are  the  result  of 
moral  and  social  vices.  Moreover,  you  forget  that  it 
is  precisely  these  rich  men  who  give  the  money  to 
support  and  maintain  such  hospitals  as  St.  Luke's 
or  Roosevelt,  who  furnish  free  pasteurised  milk  to 
babies,  who  give  the  fresh-air  outings  to  such  great 
numbers  of  children  and  poor  women  and  shop  girls, 
who  build  and  maintain  cottages  and  homes  to  which 
those  afflicted  with  tuberculosis  may  be  sent  to  secure 
precisely  that  fresh  air,  nourishing  food,  sunlight,  and 
the  like  of  which  you  speak. 

Yes,  that  is  perfectly  true ;  and  there  are  some  among 
them  who  not  only  give  the  money  for  these  things 
but  who  give  themselves.  But  it  is  also  true,  and 
that  is  precisely  what  our  Lord  points  out,  that  the 
great  bulk  of  the  people  who  have  these  things  of 
which  I  have  spoken  give  their  gifts  as  the  crumbs 
which  fall  from  their  table  to  the  beggars  who  lie  at 
their  door.  What  they  do  not  need  and  what  they 
do  not  want,  that  they  give.  Like  Sir  Launfal  they 
turn  their  heads  aside  and  toss  the  leprous  beggar  a 
bag  of  gold.  Those  who  have  this  world's  goods  above 
the  average  have  a  mighty  burden  of  responsibility. 
However  they  have  achieved  wealth,  whether  by  their 
industry,  their  ability,  their  skill,  or  by  inheritance 
from  those  who  have  gone  before  them,  in  God's  sight 
that  wealth  is  theirs  not  to  enjoy  but  to  share.  The 
very  fact  that  it  is  stupidity  and  sin  which  have 
brought  the  dwellers  of  the  slums  into  their  present 
condition  lays  the  greater  burden  on  those  who  have 


Palaces  and  Slums  247 

achieved  success.  It  is  theirs  to  show  these  others 
how,  to  take  them  by  the  hand,  to  lead  them  into 
better  paths.  Even  if  a  man  were  to  sell  all  his  goods, 
as  St.  Paul  says,  and  give  them  to  the  poor,  and  yet 
did  not  have  charity,  did  not  give  himself,  it  would  be 
worth  nothing  in  the  sight  of  God. 

Now  here  is  the  life  which  many  a  virtuous  family 
leads:  The  man  is  successful  in  business.  He  is  en- 
gaged in  a  variety  of  great  enterprises,  the  director 
of  this  railroad  and  of  that  bank  or  of  some  large 
industrial  enterprise.  Life  is  strenuous  with  him. 
His  hours  of  business  are  relatively  short,  but  the 
strain  is  great.  He^absolutely  requires  rest  and  change. 
He  finds  it  in  racing  out  with  his  automobile  to  his 
country  home  or  to  some  inn ;  he  finds  it  in  a  week's  end 
at  this  place  or  that.  One  or  two  days  in  the  week 
he  spends  the  afternoon  at  golf.  He  goes  to  his  club 
in  the  evening  and  plays  billiards,  or  he  goes  out  to 
dinner,  to  the  theatre,  the  opera,  or  plays  whist  at 
home  with  a  party  of  friends.  All  the  time  he  can  get 
off  from  business  he  needs  and  uses  for  wholesome 
recreation  and  amusement.  His  name  is  down  as  a 
donor  to  half  a  dozen  charitable  institutions.  Possibly 
the  amount  which  he  gives  to  them  and  to  the  church 
of  which  he  is  a  member  is  one  tenth  or  even  more 
than  one  tenth  of  his  total  income.  If  he  gives  that 
much  he  is  likely  to  be  counted  an  extremely  generous 
man.  He  may  be  a  director  on  the  board  of  one  or 
two  charities  and  once  a  month  or  once  a  fortnight 
he  attends  their  meetings.  Once  a  year  or  so  possibly 
he  goes  to  look  at  the  institution  of  which  he  is  a 
trustee.  He  may  be  a  warden  or  vestryman  of  a 


248  Modern  Christianity 

church.  He  attends  the  meetings,  helps  make  up  the 
deficiency  in  this  or  that  thing;  he  is  generally  in  his 
place  at  church  and  helps  to  take  up  the  alms,  and  is 
regular  at  communion.  The  women  of  the  family, 
his  wife  and  his  daughters,  see  to  it  that  the  social 
status  of  the  family  is  maintained,  which  is  hard  work 
and  takes  up  much  time.  They  are  good  and  kindly 
towards  their  employees.  They  are  members  of  some 
ladies'  organisation  in  the  church  which  they  attend. 
Possibly  during  the  time  when  they  are  in  the  city 
they  take  up  some  further  work.  They  visit  in  some 
hospital,  or  on  Sunday  perhaps  they  go  over  to  the 
Island  to  help  sing  in  a  choir  and  talk  to  the  poor 
people  there.  They  are  on  the  ladies'  association  of 
some  settlement  or  home.  They  attend  meetings 
once  a  month,  perhaps,  when  they  are  in  town,  and 
occasionally  they  go  and  visit  the  home  or  settlement 
in  which  they  are  interested. 

Now  we  are  inclined  to  commend  such  a  life,  by 
comparison,  as  worthy,  virtuous,  and  religious.  But 
in  reality  the  life  of  those  people,  both  men  and 
women,  is  lived  for  themselves.  The  amount  of 
money  which  they  give,  large  as  it  is  in  bulk,  is  small 
in  comparison  with  what  they  are  able  to  give.  The 
time  which  they  devote  to  these  things  is  not  one 
tenth  of  the  time  which  they  devote  to  themselves. 
Do  they  do  for  the  beggar  who  lies  at  their  gates,  for 
the  slums  which  lie  at  their  doors,  that  which  it  is 
within  their  power  to  do?  Have  they  that  tender 
pity  and  sympathy  and  love  which  makes  them  so 
yearn  to  relieve  suffering  and  misery  that  they  are  not 
content  to  leave  one  stone  unturned  until  it  is  removed? 


Palaces  and  Slums  249 

In  general  the  attitude  of  those  of  us  yho  are  pros- 
perous, as  the  world  counts  prosperity,  is  that  we 
have  won  it  for  ourselves ;  it  is  our  money,  our  success. 
We  would  like  to  help  these  others,  but  after  all  our 
first  obligation  is  toward  ourselves  and  our  own.  We 
look  toward  those  who  are  still  more  successful  and 
better  off  than  ourselves.  We  wish  to  keep  up  with 
them,  we  desire  to  obtain  the  same  good  things  which 
they  have.  It  is  our  right  to  do  so  and  to  use  all  our 
abilities  to  achieve  that  end ;  and  these  others—well 
we  would  like  to  do  something  for  them.  We  will 
toss  them  a  bag  of  gold,  with  our  heads  turned  to  one 
side,  and  hurry  on  as  fast  as  we  can  to  catch  the  others. 
It  is  their  own  fault  after  all  that  they  are  where  they 
are.  We  are  glad  that  there  are  men  and  women  who 
are  establishing  institutions  or  undertaking  work  to 
make  them  better,  but  that  is  a  special  vocation.  The 
bulk  of  men  and  women  certainly  cannot  be  expected 
to  give  their  time  to  that.  We  must  be  kindly  and 
loving  and  affectionate  to  those  in  our  families  and 
those  about  us,  but  outside  of  that  it  is  better  to  do 
what  charity  we  have  to  do  by  proxy,  give  to  missions, 
hospitals,  and  the  like ;  and  because  we  take  that  atti- 
tude, what  we  give  is  after  all  only  the  crumbs  which 
fall  from  our  table.  What  one  of  us  is  there  whose 
giving  is  a  real  sacrifice?  We  have  our  banquets,  we 
have  our  comforts;  our  giving  does  not  deprive  us  of 
them.  It  is  only  what  is  left  over,  what  we  do  not 
need  that  we  give  away. 

Now  the  attitude  of  God  toward  man  is  this:  He 
does  not  ask  whether  it  is  our  own  fault  that  we  are 
sinful  and  miserable.  If  we  believe  in  the  teaching  of 


250  Modern  Christianity 

Christianity,  we  believe  that  God  "so  loved  the  world 
that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son."  His  heart 
yearns  over  men  precisely  because  they  are  miserable 
and  suffering,  and  it  is  Himself  that  He  gives,  His  only 
begotten  Son ;  and  so  behold  Jesus,  the  only  begotten 
Son  of  God,  suffering  with  the  suffering,  poor  with  the 
poor,  sharing  with  His  brothers.  There  is  one  prayer 
which  He  taught  us  and  which  you  and  I  say  night 
and  morning,  which  begins  with  the  words  "Our 
Father/'  It  was  the  Israelites'  idea  that  God  was 
their  Father  and  they  were  His  children.  But  to  our 
Lord  all  mankind  are  brothers.  Very  literally  He 
means  us  to  carry  that  out.  We  talk  about  believing 
in  Him  and  about  salvation  through  Jesus.  There  is 
no  belief  in  Him  and  no  salvation  through  Jesus  until 
a  man  has  entered  into  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  As  God 
came  down  from  heaven  to  take  men  into  heaven,  as 
He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son,  His  very  heart,  that 
He  might  bring  joy  into  the  lives  of  the  unhappy,  virtue 
into  the  lives  of  the  sinful,  healing  into  the  lives  of  the 
sick;  so  He  expects  us,  to  whom  He  has  given,  as  it 
were,  a  heaven,  not  to  stay  in  that  heaven  and  enjoy 
ourselves  there,  but  to  open  its  doors  to  others,  to  come 
down  out  of  it  and  gather  them  into  it,  to  give  them 
of  our  joy  and  virtue,  of  our  health,  and  of  our  wealth. 

Our  parable  means  this:  If  there  be  men  living  in 
comfort,  living  at  ease,  living  in  prosperity,  having 
good  houses,  fine  things  to  eat  and  drink,  doctors  to 
heal  their  ills,  music  and  art  to  uplift  and  elevate  their 
thoughts,  all  the  things  which  men  count  good  for 
body,  mind,  and  soul;  and  there  be  by  them  other 
men  and  women  who  have  not  these  things  and  do 


Palaces  and  Slums  251 

not  know  how  to  obtain  them;  and  it  appear  that 
those  who  have  these  things  have  given  to  the  others 
only  their  crumbs,  that  which  they  did  not  need  nor 
miss,  that  they  have  not  shared  with  them  and  been 
their  brothers,  then  the  former  have  played  the  part 
of  Dives  and  their  lot  in  the  hereafter  will  be  the  lot 
of  Dives,  for  they  had  their  good  things  in  this  life. 
The  man  who  has  not  found  the  joy  of  love  and  sacri- 
fice is  incapable  of  knowing  God;  he  cannot  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  God. 

The  social  conditions  which  exist  in  this  city  of 
New  York — and  I  do  not  mean  that  New  York  is  ex- 
ceptional in  this — are  an  exact  reproduction  of  those 
conditions  which  our  Lord  so  graphically  depicted 
in  the  story  of  Dives  and  Lazarus.  There  are  un- 
doubtedly self-denying  men  and  women  among  our 
prosperous  and  well-to-do  classes  who  are  not  merely 
giving  the  beggar  at  their  gate  crumbs,  but  who  are 
treating  him  as  their  brother,  whom  they  must  love 
as  themselves;  but  taking  our  social  conditions  as  a 
whole,  that  is  not  true.  The  conditions  which  prevail 
among  us  could  not  prevail  if  even  the  majority  of  the 
well-to-do  men  and  women  in  our  churches  realised 
their  obligation  not  to  throw  their  crumbs  to  the 
beggar  at  their  gate,  but  to  lift  him  up,  to  heal  his 
sores,  to  take  him  into  their  homes,  to  make  him  one 
of  themselves.  And  because  this  is  true,  therefore  the 
condemnation  which  our  Lord  uttered  in  this  parable 
applies  to  the  Christian  society  of  this  Christian  city. 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  HOUSE 

ST.  MARK  x.,  44:  And  whosoever  of  you  would  be  the 
chiefest,  shall  be  servant  of  all. 

THESE  words  of  our  Lord  were  uttered  as  the 
result  of  a  controversy  between  His  immediate 
followers  with  regard  to  leadership.  As  they  were 
all  on  the  way  up  to  Jerusalem  on  that  last  journey, 
which  was  to  end  in  Jesus'  death,  James  and  John, 
sons  of  Zebedee,  or  their  mother — accounts  are  di- 
vergent,— asked  Jesus  to  assign  to  them  the  seats  of 
honour  on  His  right  hand  and  on  His  left  in  the  king- 
dom He  was  about  to  establish.  When  the  rest 
learned  of  this  attempt,  they  were  very  angry  and  a 
general  wrangle  ensued,  each  one  wishing  to  be  the 
greatest  in  the  kingdom. 

Then  Jesus  set  forth  the  principles  of  His  kingdom, 
the  precise  opposite  of  the  world  conception :  "  Ye  know 
that  they  which  are  accounted  to  rule  over  the  Gentiles 
lord  it  over  them;  and  their  great  ones  exercise  author- 
ity upon  them.  But  so  it  shall  not  be  among  you,  but 
whosoever  would  be  great  among  you  shall  be  your 
minister,  and  whosoever  of  you  would  be  the  chiefest 
shall  be  servant  of  all;  for  even  the  Son  of  Man  came 
not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and  to  give 
His  life  a  ransom  for  many." 

35* 


The  Servant  in  the  House       253 

From  the  beginning  of  the  new  kingdom  that  has 
been  the  law,  the  rule  of  the  kingdom:  He  who  is  the 
best  servant  of  all  holds  the  chief  place.  The  Gos- 
pels are  full  of  this  revolutionary  teaching.  A  most 
graphic  presentation  of  this  idea  is  found  in  St.  John's 
Gospel.  When,  at  the  last  supper  that  they  ever  ate 
together,  on  the  very  eve  of  our  Lord's  death,  the 
Apostles  fell  a-wrangling  as  to  precedence,  rank,  dig- 
nity, Jesus  took  off  His  garments,  girded  Himself  as  a 
slave,  took  water,  and  commenced  to  perform  the 
menial  office  of  washing  their  feet.  There  can  be  ab- 
solutely no  doubt  as  to  what  the  practice  of  our  King 
was,  and  equally  no  doubt  as  to  the  rule  of  the  kingdom 
which  He  laid  down  to  govern  you  and  me. 

Is  that  rule  carried  out  in  the  society  to  which  you 
and  I  belong?  Or  do  we,  while  professing  to  be  Christ- 
ians, take  what  our  Lord  described  as  the  method  of 
the  Gentiles,  counting  the  man  great  who  lords  it 
over  others?  In  practice  I  think  we  must  agree  that 
the  latter  is  the  case ;  that,  whatever  the  Church  may 
have  done  towards  leavening  the  world,  up  to  the 
present  moment,  in  this  respect,  the  leaven  has  not 
worked  very  far  and  we  are  still  part  of  a  very  un- 
leavened society;  that,  so  far  as  those  relations  are 
concerned,  society  has  contaminated  the  Church,  and 
not  the  Church  leavened  society,  so  that  the  great 
body  of  Christians  consider  it  compatible  with  their 
Christianity  to  call  themselves  Christians  and  yet 
conform  to  that  anti-Christian  rule  of  counting  him 
greatest  who  lords  it  most;  and,  inasmuch  as  the 
individual  members  of  the  Church  stand  in  this  posi- 
tion, it  follows  almost  as  a  consequence  that  the  Church 


254  Modern  Christianity 

itself,  in  its  general  relation  to  social  conditions,  holds 
the  same  attitude. 

This  attitude  of  the  Church  toward  society  is  the 
theme  of  a  profoundly  significant  play  which  was  put 
on  the  boards  a  year  or  so  ago  entitled  "The  Servant 
in  the  House,"  which  many  of  you  may  have  seen. 
As  I  want  to  use  the  treatment  of  this  theme  in  that 
play  to  illustrate  what  I  have  to  say,  I  shall  venture 
to  give  you,  not  an  analysis  of  the  play,  but  an  outline 
of  what  it  undertakes  to  present. 

Of  three  brothers,  who  came  from  the  plain  working 
people  stock  of  England,  one  entered  the  Church. 
He  was  enabled  to  do  so  by  the  work  of  his  two  broth- 
ers. It  was  their  toil  by  means  of  which  he  secured 
an  education.  They  remained  illiterate  labourers; 
he  became  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman.  One  of  the 
brothers,  the  eldest,  was  lost  sight  of.  His  other 
brother,  a  rough,  coarse  fellow,  had  a  wife  who  died, 
and,  partly  as  a  result  of  this,  he  fell  into  thoroughly 
bad  habits.  He  was  a  common  labourer,  compelled 
to  do  work  of  a  peculiarly  offensive  nature,  cleaning 
sewers.  His  wife  left  him  a  daughter,  whom  the 
clergyman  brother  took  and  educated.  The  clergy- 
man brother  had  married  a  wife,  Martha.  She  was 
a  good  Churchwoman  and  determined  to  bring  her 
husband  up  to  her  own  high  social  standard.  Her 
brother  was  a  rich  bishop.  To  this  Martha  the 
low-down  brother,  who  drank  and  cleaned  sewers  and 
used  coarse  language  and  wore  dirty  clothes  and  was 
a  rabid  socialist,  was  a  most  objectionable  attachment. 
He  was  some  one  to  be  kept  out  of  sight  and  helped 
at  a  distance,  on  condition  that  he  should  efface  him- 


The  Servant  in  the  House       255 

self,  not  to  be  acknowledged  as  a  brother  and  taken 
into  her  house.  His  daughter,  Mary,  was  not  even 
allowed  to  know  who  her  father  was,  much  less  to 
know  him.  She  was  to  be  brought  up  a  lady.  Martha 
separated  her  husband,  the  Church,  from  his  brother, 
the  working  man,  out  of  whom  he  had  grown,  on 
whose  toil  his  education  had  depended  and  his  church 
itself  been  built.  Martha  was  respectable,  godly,  de- 
voted to  her  husband,  eager  to  raise  him  in  the  social 
scale,  a  pious  and  virtuous  materialist.  She  is  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  good  women  who  manage  our 
churches,  who  send  missionaries  to  the  heathen  abroad 
and  the  slums  at  home,  the  while  they  are,  by  their 
materialism,  by  their  being  cumbered  by  the  many 
things  of  this  world  and  setting  those  things  first, — 
material  well-being,  decency,  and  social  propriety, — 
separating  their  husband,  the  Church,  from  his  brother, 
the  common  working  man.  To  Mary,  the  daughter 
of  the  working-man  brother,  whom  Martha  and  her 
husband  had  adopted,  these  society  things  did  not 
have  the  same  importance,  and  she  was  continually 
making  the  strange  blunder  of  seeing  the  souls  of 
people  and  seeking  friendship  with  them  because  of 
their  souls  and  not  because  of  their  positions  and 
their  relations.  She  is  singularly  appealing,  just  be- 
cause of  what  we  might,  perhaps,  call  her  impracti- 
cableness.  She  is  always  ready  to  sit  at  the  Master's 
feet  wherever  she  finds  Him,  and  she  knows  and 
recognises  the  divine  voice,  even  if  it  speaks  out  of  the 
mouth  of  a  dirty  labourer  or  a  strangely  attired 
foreigner. 
Martha's  husband,  who  is  the  Church,  is  uneasy  in 


256  Modern  Christianity 

his  soul.  The  church  services  are  beautiful;  he  goes 
faithfully,  early  in  the  morning,  to  administer  the 
Sacrament ;  but  the  church  in  some  way  does  not  meet 
what  his  soul  yearns  for.  The  people  are  not  there; 
he  is  not  reaching  them,  and  he  feels  himself,  in  a  way 
which  he  can  scarcely  explain,  tangled  up  in  things 
which  hamper  and  prevent  alike  his  work  and  his  own 
spiritual  development.  But  Martha  sees  and  feels 
none  of  all  this,  except  only  to  be  indignant  that  the 
people  do  not  appreciate  her  husband,  the  refined  and 
comfortable  Church,  as  they  ought. 

At  this  time  they  are  troubled  in  the  rectory  with 
offensive  gases,  which  seem  to  be  especially  trouble- 
some in  the  clergyman's  study.  So  a  man  is  sent  for  to 
clean  the  sewers,  and  that  man  is  the  common  working 
man,  the  brother  from  whom  the  Church  has  become 
alienated  and  who  is  embittered  against  the  Church, 
which  he  feels  has  grown  out  of  him  and  now  crushes 
him  down. 

At  the  same  time  a  new  butler  has  been  engaged. 
Recommended  by  friends,  supposed  to  be  a  Hindu 
from  India,  he  comes  to  commence  his  service  in  the 
house  on  the  same  day  that  the  sewer  man  comes. 
Just  then,  also,  is  expected  the  Bishop  of  Benares,  who, 
the  clergyman  has  just  learned,  is  his  long  lost  elder 
brother,  a  man  who,  according  to  report,  has  been  doing 
a  wonderful  work  for  Christ  in  India.  Proud  of  this, 
Martha  has  informed  her  brother,  and  so  the  rich  and 
worldly  Bishop,  who  has  been  more  or  less  alienated 
from  his  sister  because  she  married  a  man  from  the 
people,  hastens  to  visit  them,  eager  to  meet  the  famous 
Bishop  of  Benares  and  to  engage  him  in  his  plans  for 


The  Servant  in  the  House      257 

church  building,  for  the  aggrandisement  and  enrich- 
ment of  the  Church  and  its  hierarchy. 

Then  commences  the  entanglement.  The  semi- 
blindness  of  the  groping,  worldly  Bishop,  whose  con- 
ception of  his  office  is  to  secure  money  from  rich  men 
and  rich  women,  money  from  anybody,  to  build,  build, 
build, — great  buildings,  churches,  colleges,  hospitals, 
and  the  like,  to  provide  rich  endowments  for  the  same, 
to  enrich  the  Church  and  make  it  comfortable — this 
man's  groping  semi-blindness  leads  him  into  many 
embarrassments.  He  thinks  the  butler  in  his  Indian 
robes  to  be  the  Bishop  of  Benares,  the  clergyman's 
brother,  who  he  in  fact  is  and  yet  is  not,  and  confides 
to  him  his  plans,  and  seeks  to  learn  his  secret.  And 
then  he  hears  from  him,  who  is  indeed  both  servant 
and  master,  how  the  great  church  that  he  has  built 
is  not  a  church  built  of  stone  and  mortar,  but  "made 
up  of  the  beating  of  human  hearts,  of  the  nameless  music 
of  men's  souls,"  ...  "a  looming  mystery  of  many 
shapes  and  shadows,  leaping  sheer  from  floor  to  dome. 
The  work  of  no  ordinary  builder!"  .  .  . 

"The  pillars  of  it  go  up  like  the  brawny  trunks  of 
heroes:  the  sweet  human  flesh  of  men  and  women  is 
moulded  about  its  bulwarks,  strong,  impregnable:  the 
faces  of  little  children  laugh  out  from  every  comer- 
stone:  the  terrible  spans  and  arches  of  it  are  the  joined 
hands  of  comrades:  and  up  in  the  heights  and  spaces 
there  are  inscribed  the  numberless  musings  of  all  the 
dreamers  of  the  world.  It  is  yet  building—building 
and  built  upon.  Sometimes  the  work  goes  forward  in 
deep  darkness:  sometimes  in  blinding  light:  now  be- 
neath the  burden  of  unutterable  anguish:  now  to  the 
17 


258  Modern  Christianity 

tune  of  a  great  laughter  and  heroic  shouting  like  the  cry 
of  thunder.  Sometimes,  in  the  silence  of  the  night- 
time, one  may  hear  the  tiny  hammerings  of  the  com- 
rades at  work  up  in  the  dome — the  comrades  that  have 
climbed  ahead." 

This  same  groping  blindness  leads  the  worldly  wise 
Bishop  to  mistake  the  working  man  in  his  soiled  clothes 
for  his  brother  the  clergyman,  and  to  sit  down  and  eat 
at  the  table  with  him  and  with  the  Indian  butler, 
whom  he  forces  to  join  them,  only  to  be  shocked  and 
outraged  on  discovering,  finally,  that  he,  the  great 
dignitary  of  the  Church,  has  been  hobnobbing  with  a 
dirty,  filthy,  labouring  man,  a  sewer  cleaner,  and  with  a 
barbarously  dressed  Hindu  servant,  and  actually  treat- 
ing them  as  brothers! 

The  sewer-cleaner  brother  is  at  first  very  bitter, 
and  both  repulsive  and  repellent.  He  hates  the  Church 
and  all  for  which  it  stands,  the  brother  that  looks  down 
on  him,  and  the  society  which  controls  that  brother's 
life.  But  the  things  which  he  finds  and  sees  in  the 
clergyman's  house,  imperfect  as  it  all  is,  his  own  work- 
ing-man's daughter  growing  up  so  sweet  and  clean,  to 
be  a  lady,  this  strange  servant  from  a  foreign  land,  with 
the  wonderful  words  of  the  true  missionary  who  has 
found  God  among  men,  make  a  profound  impression 
upon  him.  He  had  come  into  the  house  with  bitterness 
in  his  heart  against  all.  Things  begin  to  take  on  a  new 
appearance.  He  finds  that  the  offensive  odours  come 
from  an  evil  condition  in  the  sewers,  and  that  beneath 
the  Church  itself  lies  the  great  source  of  all  the  diffi- 
culty,— an  ancient  cesspool  and  cemetery  combined,  in 
which  the  rotting  bones  of  dead  men  and  the  refuse  of 


The  Servant  in  the  House       259 

the  present  age  have  mingled  together,  finding  no 
outlet.  And  now  he  has  found  his  work:  to  clean  out 
the  sewers  of  corruption  and  discontent.  It  may  mean 
disease  and  death,  but  that  is  his  job. 

On  the  other  side,  that  touch  of  the  Church  with  the 
brother  in  India,  the  race  which  he  had  despised,  which 
he  had  governed  and  controlled  but  shut  out  from  all 
social  contact — the  contact  of  the  Church  with  that 
brother,  all  unknown  yet  as  his  brother,  counted  only 
as  a  servant,  his  butler,  has  taught  the  clergyman 
brother  a  new  lesson  of  the  brotherhood  also  of 
the  labouring  brother  at  home  whom  he  had  thought 
unfit  for  his  society  and  his  table.  And  so,  when 
the  labouring  brother  starts  in  on  the  dangerous 
task  of  cleaning  the  sewers  of  state  and  society, 
the  clergyman  brother  throws  off  his  clerical  gar- 
ments, his  garb  of  caste,  and  prepares  to  go  down  with 
his  brother,  at  every  risk,  to  clear  out  the  foulness 
beneath  his  beloved  Church.  Then  brother  clasps 
hands  with  brother  in  very  truth.  And  Martha? 
Society  wedded  to  the  Church,  our  godly,  pious  society? 
Ah  yes!  At  first  she  would  have  kept  him  back;  but 
Martha  is  not  all  bad.  It  is  just  her  lack  of  under- 
standing, of  perception.  She  had  not  seen  nor  under- 
stood what  she  had  been  doing.  She  had  meant  to  raise 
her  husband,  and  she  had  pulled  him  down.  When  it 
comes  to  the  point  of  her  husband's  love  and  it  is  a 
question  between  surrendering  her  social  concept  or 
her  husband,  the  Church  of  Christ,  she  is  willing  to 
stand  by  him  and  to  bid  him  go  and  work  with  his 
brother. 

And  then  all  realise  the  spirit  that  has  come  upon 


260  Modern  Christianity 

them  and  that  this  servant  in  the  house,  this  Indian 
servant  from  that  ancient  nation  whom  they,  the 
English,  have  exploited,  whom  they  count  their 
inferiors,  is  the  revelation  of  Christ  to  them,  or  that 
he  is  in  fact  Christ  to  them,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is 
said,  in  the  25th  chapter  of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel: 
"Inasmuch  as  ye  have  done  it  unto  one  of  the 
least  of  these  my  brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto 
me." 

The  play  is  English,  in  that  it  represents  English 
conditions.  The  inferior  race,  to  use  a  common  but 
offensive  term,  is  the  people  of  Hindustan,  and  it  is 
through  them  in  the  author's  conception,  through 
the  service  of  the  Church  to  them,  that  the  Church  is 
roused  to  a  perception  of  true  brotherhood  and  its 
obligation  to  minister.  Were  that  to  be  translated 
literally  into  the  conditions  of  American  life,  we  should 
place  the  negro  for  the  Indian  and  the  servant  in  the 
house  would  appear  as  a  coloured  man.  I  am  afraid 
that  our  race  prejudice  is  so  strong  that,  had  it  been  so 
presented,  the  play,  instead  of  meeting  with  a  generally 
favourable  reception,  would  have  been  overwhelmed 
by  an  outcry  of  indignation. 

Ah!  that  is  a  great  problem  that  we  have  to  meet, 
the  negro  problem.  I  think  that  we  often  look  at  it 
wrong  side  foremost.  God,  we  say,  has  given  us  this 
problem  to  solve,  that  we  may  find  a  way  to  make 
these  people  self-respecting,  self-supporting.  There 
is  a  great  work  that  we  have  to  do  for  these  people. 
But  has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  to  turn  it  about  the 
other  way?  God  has  given  these  people  to  us  to  teach 
us  service,  to  teach  us  humility,  to  teach  us  brotherly 


The  Servant  in  the  House       261 

love,  to  bring  us  back  to  the  foundation  principles 
of  the  Gospel.  And  the  solution  of  the  negro  problem 
is  more  important,  not  for  its  effect  on  them,  but  for 
its  effect  on  us.  In  working  out  their  salvation 
we  shall  work  out  our  own.  Through  them  Jesus,  the 
meek  and  humble,  Jesus,  the  Servant  of  servants,  may 
come  back  to  His  people;  for  wherever  the  Church  is 
roused  to  the  sense  of  its  obligation  to  go  and  serve, 
wherever  it  does  not  seek  to  lord  it  over  men,  but  to 
gird  itself  as  a  slave  and  wash  their  feet,  there  the 
Church  will  see  Christ  revealed  in  the  servant  in  its 
midst.  Then  we  shall  enter  into  a  new  conception  of 
service  and  both  the  priests  and  the  congregations  in 
our  churches,  both  our  Marthas  and  our  Marys, 
shall  be  owning  as  brothers  and  as  fathers  the  coarse 
and  humble  toilers,  whose  bodies  and  souls  alike  are 
too  often  stained  with  muck  and  filth;  and  those 
brothers  will  find  their  place  and  their  work  in  a  Cath- 
olic Church  of  God.  That  is  the  dream  of  this  little 
play,  the  vision  which  it  presents. 

I  have  heard  it  described  as  socialistic  and  I  can 
imagine  some  even  among  you,  my  readers,  saying  in 
your  hearts:  Why,  this  is  socialism.  It  is  very  strange 
how  ignorantly  that  word  is  used.  I  believe  the  author 
of  the  play  is  a  socialist ;  but,  so  far  as  the  play  itself  is 
concerned,  it  might  have  been  written  by  the  most 
extreme  individualist.  What  it  represents  is  that  which 
Christianity  stands  for:  the  recognition  of  one  Father  of 
all  men,  and  of  all  men  as  brothers ;  the  abolition  of  class 
distinctions,  the  abolition  of  race  distinctions,  so  that 
there  shall  be  neither  "  Greek  nor  Jew,  circumcision  nor 
uncircumcision,  Barbarian,  Scythian,  bond  nor  free." 


262  Modern  Christianity 

The  Christian  Church  as  such  looks  to  the  realisation 
in  actual  practice  among  men  of  the  idea  of  the 
brotherhood  of  men,  under  one  Father,  God;  and  he 
has  not  entered  into  the  true  teaching  of  the  Church, 
he  is  not  made  one  with  Christ,  who  does  not  believe 
in  this  and  is  not  striving  for  it  according  to  his  ability. 
The  conception  of  the  Church  is  not  self-gain,  nor  self- 
power,  nor  self-ease,  but  so  to  serve  that  we  may 
give  wealth  and  power  to  the  community,  that  we  may 
bring  greater  ease  and  comfort  into  the  lives  of  all  our 
fellows.  Your  service  may  be  rendered  to  a  few,  to  two 
or  three  or  only  one,  or  you  may  be  rendering  your 
service  to  a  great  number;  but  whatever  the  nature  of 
your  service,  and  whether  it  is  rendered  very  humbly  to 
only  one,  or  manifestly  to  a  great  many,  serve  you  must, 
if  you  would  be  a  Christian.  You  have  not  entered 
into  the  real  relation  with  Christ  unless  you  have  put 
service  as  the  purpose  of  your  life,  unless  you  are  striv- 
ing to  learn  how  to  serve  and  to  get  the  spirit  and 
strength  of  God  to  serve.  And  the  Church  is  not  fulfill- 
ing its  purpose  in  the  world,  it  is  not  manifesting  itself 
as  the  Body  of  Christ,  unless  the  same  spirit  be  in  it. 

And  the  Church  is  beginning  to  wake  up  to  the 
necessity  of  bestirring  itself,  so  far  as  the  masses  of  the 
labouring  people  are  concerned,  that  brother  by  whose 
toil  its  churches  were  created,  whose  discontent  now 
forms  the  bad  and  dangerous  gases  that  are  affecting 
society  and  the  state.  At  the  last  Lambeth  Conference 
one  of  the  topics  of  discussion  was  the  present  social 
unrest,  the  cause  of  the  alienation  of  large  masses  of 
working  men  from  the  Church  and  of  their  search  for 
the  Church  in  labour  unions  and  socialistic  movements. 


The  Servant  in  the  House       263 

In  the  Lambeth  Encyclical,  issued  in  the  name  of  the 
243  "Archbishops,  Bishops  Metropolitan,  and  other 
Bishops  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  in  full  Communion 
with  the  Church  of  England,"  this  passage  occurs: 
"By  the  power  of  the  truth  which  it  carries  and  de- 
clares, the  Church  is  constantly  serving  the  cause  of 
true  progress.  But  it  has  a  further  duty — to  be  watch- 
fully responsive  to  the  opportunities  of  service  which 
the  movements  of  civil  society  provide.  The  demo- 
cratic movement  of  our  century  presents  one  of  these 
opportunities.  Underlying  it  are  ideals  of  brother- 
hood, liberty,  and  mutual  justice  and  help.  In  those 
ideals  we  recognise  the  working  of  our  Lord's  teaching 
as  to  the  inestimable  value  of  every  human  being  in 
the  sight  of  God,  and  His  special  thought  for  the  weak 
and  the  oppressed.  These  are  practical  truths  pro- 
claimed by  the  ancient  prophets  and  enforced  by  our 
Lord  with  all  the  perfectness  of  His  teaching  and  His 
life.  We  call  upon  the  Church  to  consider  how  far  and 
wherein  it  has  departed  from  these  truths.  In  so  far 
as  the  democratic  and  industrial  movement  is  animated 
by  them  and  strives  to  procure  for  all,  especially  for 
the  weaker,  just  treatment,  and  a  real  opportunity  of 
living  a  true  human  life,  we  appeal  to  all  Christians  to 
co-operate  actively  with  it.  Only  so  can  they  hope 
to  commend  to  the  movement  the  Spirit  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  which  is  at  once  its  true  stimulus  and  its 
true  corrective.  Only  so  can  they  win  for  Him  that 
allegiance  which  is  the  constant  and  enduring  security 
for  the  hopes  and  progress  of  human  society." 


THE  NEEDLE'S  EYE 

ST.  MARK  x.,  25:  It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  a 
needle's  eye,  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  God. 


literalists  have  a  way  of  interpreting 
the  words  of  the  Bible  which  yet  enables  them 
to  explain  away  the  sense.  I  remember  some  very 
ridiculous  explanations  which  used  to  be  given  in  all 
good  faith  by  just  such  men  of  this  proverb:  that 
there  was  a  gate  at  Damascus,  or  somewhere,  no  one 
knew  precisely  where,  in  some  oriental  city,  which 
was  known  as  the  eye  of  a  needle  and  which  it  was 
very  hard  for  a  loaded  camel,  or  indeed  for  any  camel 
to  pass  through  ;  but  then  it  was  possible  for  a  camel 
to  go  through  it,  if  he  were  the  right  sort  of  a  camel, 
and  so  it  was  possible  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  God,  if  he  were  the  right  sort  of  a  rich 
man. 

It  is  strange  how  men  will  interpret  with  intense 
literalness  some  of  our  Lord's  sayings,  or  certain  doc- 
trines of  the  Church,  on  which  there  seems  to  be  but 
little  emphasis,  and  then  explain  away  the  very  plain 
statements  on  which  He  laid  such  emphasis  that  it 
seems  clear  He  meant  them  to  be  fundamental.  A 
man  will  insist  on  a  literal  belief  in  the  Virgin  birth  as 
a  condition  of  membership  in  the  Church  of  Christ,  the 

264 


The  Needle's  Eye  265 

kingdom  of  God,  and  then  make  that  Church  itself 
the  Church  of  the  rich,  of  whom  our  Lord  said  that 
they  shall  hardly  enter  into  the  kingdom.  Now  in 
reality  the  fundamental  conditions  of  the  kingdom 
of  God,  which  should  be  also  the  fundamental  conditions 
of  membership  in  the  Church  of  Christ,  because  the 
Church  of  Christ  is  meant  to  be  the  kingdom  of  God, 
are  not  doctrinal  expressions,  but  a  belief  in  the  person 
of  Jesus  Christ,  submission  to  the  will  of  God  as  ex- 
pressed in  His  life,  an  acceptance  of  His  teaching  as 
the  rule  of  life,  of  His  life  as  the  pattern  of  our  lives. 
The  Jewish  Church  at  the  time  of  our  Lord  was  the 
church  of  the  well-to-do,  the  prosperous,  educated 
Jews;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  Church  to-day  in 
this  country,  as  in  England.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  Church 
of  the  prosperous,  the  educated,  the  rich.  Men  who 
occupy  the  position  which  our  Lord  occupied  are  not, 
as  a  rule,  in  the  Church.  The  great  mass  of  the  men 
who  work  with  their  hands,  the  artisans,  carpenters, 
stone-cutters,  printers,  and  the  like,  seem  to  find  their 
church  in  their  labour  unions,  in  their  lodges.  The 
Church  of  the  Carpenter  has  become  the  Church  to-day 
of  the  upper  and  upper-middle  classes.  Our  clergy, 
whatever  their  origin,  are  educated  to  belong  to  the 
same  class,  trained  in  their  manners  and  sympathies, 
in  their  etiquette  and  conventionalities,  to  associate 
with  that  class.  We  commonly  put  it  that  the  poor 
people  are  alienated  from  the  Church;  in  reality  the 
Church  is  alienated  from  the  poor  people. 

But  this  might  be  true,  and  yet  this  condition  have 
been  attained  through  a  normal  and  proper  course 
of  development.  I  remember  some  years  ago  an 


266  Modern  Christianity 

experiment  made  on  Breton  cattle.  With  sparse  feed, 
in  a  rugged  country,  they  were  small  and  hardy.  Their 
milk  product  was  not  as  large  as  that  of  our  better 
nourished  cattle,  but  in  proportion  to  the  care  and 
expense  bestowed  upon  them  the  yield  both  of  milk 
and  beef  was  greater.  Some  of  them  were  imported  to 
this  country,  with  an  idea  that  if  they  gave  so  much 
under  such  poor  conditions,  with  improved  conditions 
they  would  give  more.  There  was  a  natural  process 
of  development.  With  better  food  they  grew  bigger 
and  required  more  care, — and  gave  less  milk  in  propor- 
tion. If  you  transplant  any  animal  or  any  plant  from 
poorer  to  richer  conditions,  it  will  develop  accordingly. 
The  Church  has  been  transplanted.  Have  we  not  a 
case  of  normal  evolution?  It  began  by  being  the 
Church  of  the  poor  and  needy  and  humble.  They 
found  strength  and  hope  and  salvation  in  it,  and  that 
message  was  transplanted  into  another  soil.  The 
result  is  the  Church  which  we  have,  the  Church  of  the 
well-to-do  and  the  prosperous.  Has  the  Church  drifted 
away  from  that  which  it  was  meant  to  be,  or  has  there 
been  a  logical  development  from  the  Church  of  the 
poor  to  the  Church  of  the  rich,  and  is  it  any  longer  true 
that  it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  a  needle's 
eye,  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
God? 

We  know  how  riches  have  corrupted  nations.  The 
fall  of  Rome  is  an  old  and  oft-told  story.  We  pick  up 
and  read  again  the  story  of  the  downfall  of  the  republic, 
we  read  of  the  conquest  of  the  world  and  of  the  enor- 
mous wealth  that  poured  into  Rome,  and  of  the  men 
that  through  the  spoil  of  provinces  became  rich  beyond 


The  Needle's  Eye  267 

the  wildest  dreams  in  which  their  fathers  had  indulged. 
We  read  of  the  gross*  extravagance  that  ensued,  the 
corruption  of  the  simple  manners  and  the  simple  morals 
of  an  earlier  time,  and  then  we  come  to  the  struggles 
of  ambitious  young  men  to  attain  great  power  by 
means  of  wealth ;  we  have  the  tyranny,  the  outrages, 
and  misdeeds  of  a  Sulla,  a  Clodius,  and  a  Crassus,  or 
the  wild  extravagance  of  a  Caesar,  who  sought  to  make 
himself,  as  you  might  say,  a  labour  leader,  the  leader 
of  the  proletariat  of  Rome,  spending  money  lavishly 
to  win  the  hearts  of  the  people,  by  making  himself 
their  patron,  incurring  huge  debts,  which  he  expected 
to  pay  off  with  the  spoils  of  the  provinces,  which  were 
the  monopolies  of  those  days.  And  as  you  read  the 
tale  you  are  reminded  of  our  own  time:  the  enormous 
wealth  which  individuals  have  accumulated,  beyond 
the  wildest  dreams  of  possibilities  or  probabilities  which 
our  grandfathers  ever  had,  their  provinces  the  ex- 
ploitation of  special  privileges.  Here  also,  as  in  Rome, 
you  behold  the  corruption  of  the  simple  manners 
and  morals  of  a  former  time.  The  books  and  plays 
which  set  forth  the  conditions  of  life  among  our  multi- 
millionaires to-day  give  you  a  picture  of  the  slums 
turned  upside  down :  the  gambling-hell  and  the  brothel 
gilded  with  the  veneer  of  wealth;  fashionable  dames 
making  their  houses  resorts  of  gamblers;  a  conception 
of  the  family  which  is  fundamentally  immoral;  mar- 
riages not  contracted  for  companionship  of  soul,  for 
partnership  in  the  struggle  of  life,  for  the  upbuilding 
of  a  sweet,  wholesome  home  and  the  rearing  and  train- 
ing of  children;  and,  as  a  natural  consequence  of  the 
fundamentally  immoral  attitude  of  the  men  and  women 


268  Modern  Christianity 

thus  entering  into  the  marriage  relation,  the  easy 
dissolution  of  that  tie.  Men  make  love  to  their 
neighbours'  wives  as  part  of  the  form,  one  might 
say,  of  society,  and  married  women  receive  attentions 
which  a  simpler  and  purer  age  would  have  pronounced 
in  their  very  nature  immoral.  Church  men  and  Church 
women,  where  themselves  conforming  to  the  outward 
rules  of  Christian  morality,  condone  these  things  as  a 
part  of  the  natural  condition  of  life.  Moving  in  that 
society,  sharing  its  forms  and  its  associations,  they 
count  protest  against  its  vices,  or  withdrawal  from 
association  with  those  who  indulge  in  these  evil  doings 
as  an  impossible  puritanism.  Such  books  and  plays 
are  exaggerated,  they  show  you  but  one  side;  but 
even  so  they  exhibit  a  state  of  things  which  would 
have  been  absolutely  impossible  in  decent  society  fifty 
years  ago.  There  has  been  a  terrible  and  dangerous 
relaxing  of  moral  tone  under  the  temptation  of  this 
great  influx  of  wealth,  of  this  creation  of  enormous 
fortunes. 

And  our  political  life  has  felt  the  same  thing.  Pre- 
cisely as  those  Romans  of  the  latter  days  of  the  republic 
went  into  politics  to  make  vast  fortunes,  to  use  their 
positions  as  pro-consuls  of  this  province  or  that,  or 
their  opportunities  in  the  political  struggles  of  the 
day,  the  proscriptions  and  confiscations,  the  sales  at 
auction  and  the  like,  to  amass  great  fortunes,  and  then 
with  those  fortunes  further  to  corrupt  the  political  life 
of  the  people  in  order  to  protect  what  they  had  gained, 
to  enable  them  to  get  more  wealth  or  to  seize  greater 
power;  so  these  men,  seeing  the  possibilities  of  vast 
wealth,  to  be  acquired  by  means  of  special  privileges, 


The  Needle's  Eye  269 

have  gone  into  political  life  to  secure  those  special 
privileges.  Manufacturers,  gas  companies,  industrial 
enterprises,  public  service  corporations,  railroads, 
insurance  companies,  banks,  have  bought  legislation, 
either  to  protect  what  they  had  or  to  get  more.  They 
have  given,  year  after  year,  great  sums  to  business 
managers,  lobbyists,  treasurers  and  chairmen  of 
campaign  committees,  to  be  spent  in  corrupting  the 
political  life  of  the  nation.  There  is  much  in  that  life 
to-day  which  is  parallel  with  the  political  life  of  the 
last  days  of  the  Roman  republic.  We  have  our 
Clodiuses  and  Crassuses,  we  have  our  Caesars,  who  cor- 
rupt the  body  politic  with  pledges  and  largess,  to  make 
themselves  masters  of  the  nation.  When  one  abuses 
the  other  for  his  methods  it  is  the  pot  calling  the  kettle 
black. 

But  it  is  not  only  Rome  that  fell  through  wealth. 
You  who  are  familiar  with  Bible  history  know  that  in 
Samaria  it  was  prosperity  and  wealth  which  preceded 
downfall,  and  the  same  was  true  of  Jerusalem.  Read 
your  Prophets,  Amos,  Hosea,  Isaiah,  and  Micah,  and  you 
see  the  same  corruption  of  the  social  and  political  life 
through  wealth  which,  on  a  larger  scale,  produced  dis- 
aster at  Rome.  They  foretold  its  result.  They  set 
forth  certain  destruction  as  the  necessary  consequence 
of  the  immorality,  the  sensuality  and  luxury,  the  ava- 
rice and  greed  of  the  great  landowners  and  monop- 
olists, and  the  follies  of  their  wives  and  sons  and 
daughters,  who  constituted  the  rich  and  prosperous 
society  of  that  day. 

What  the  Prophets  applied  to  national  life  our  Lord 
applies  to  individual  life  in  His  statement  about  wealth. 


270  Modern  Christianity 

He  demands  as  a  condition  of  entrance  into  the  king- 
dom a  something  which  is  diametrically  opposed  to 
the  conception  of  wealth.  You  and  I  to-day  are 
eagerly  looking  out  to  see  in  what  place  we  can  put 
our  children  where  they  will  attain  an  assured  income, 
where  they  can  get  the  luxuries  and  comforts  which 
perhaps  we  never  had,  or  for  which  we  strove  with 
many  hardships  in  our  younger  days,  to  obtain  them 
at  last  when  we  were  not  able  fully  to  enjoy  or  ap- 
preciate them.  We  do  not  want  our  children  to 
undergo  those  same  struggles;  we  want  them  to  have 
ease  and  comfort.  Our  daughters  we  desire  to  see 
well  married,  and  what  we  mean  by  a  good  marriage 
is,  in  ordinary  parlance,  not  marriage  with  a  man 
of  high  ideals,  full  of  the  spirit  of  service  and  sacrifice, 
who  is  giving  his  life  to  the  service  of  his  fellow  men — 
we  do  not  call  it  a  good  marriage  that  our  daughter 
should  share  those  hardships  and  those  struggles. 
Even  where  we  admire  what  such  a  man  is  doing,  we 
do  not  wish  our  children  to  share  his  work.  A  good 
marriage  means  that  our  daughter  shall  marry  a  man 
who  has  money,  that  he  may  give  her  comforts  and 
luxuries.  We  wish  him  to  be  respectable  and 
decent,  it  is  true,  but  essentially  the  "good"  in  our 
phrase,  "a  good  marriage,"  refers  to  wealth.  Men  and 
women  of  means  do  not  wish  their  sons  to  go  into  the 
hard  occupations.  Very  few  fathers  and  mothers  who 
are  well  off  encourage  their  sons  to  study  for  the 
ministry,  for  instance,  or  to  take  up  other  similar 
professions,  which,  while  they  afford  a  great  opportu- 
nity for  service  to  one's  fellow  men,  involve  hardship 
and  small  remuneration  and  much  labor,  a  struggle 


The  Needle's  Eye  271 

to  make  ends  meet,  a  lack  of  comfort  and  of  luxury. 
The  very  attitude  which  we  take  towards  the  future 
of  our  children  shows  the  estimate  which  we  put  upon 
wealth. 

But  is  it  not  true  that  Christianity,  by  improving  the 
moral  conditions,  does  of  necessity  bring  an  increase 
in  wealth?  Is  not  the  great  wealth  of  this  country 
due  to  the  liberty,  the  freedom,  the  opportunities, 
the  law-abidingness,  the  industry,  the  thrift,  the 
honesty,  the  intelligence  and  education  which  have 
come  directly  and  indirectly  through  Christianity? 
You  preachers  often  tell  your  congregations  what 
Christianity  has  done  for  the  world.  You  tell  us  about 
the  work  of  missions,  how  they  have  lifted  people  out 
of  savagery,  how  they  have  enabled  them  to  build 
better  houses,  to  dress  better,  how  their  physical  condi- 
tions have  been  improved,  how  their  wealth  has  been 
increased.  You  picture  our  present  civilisation,  with 
its  knowledge  and  control  of  the  forces  of  nature,  and 
the  consequent  wealth  that  has  accompanied  that 
civilisation,  as  primarily  due  to  Christianity.  You 
tell  us  that  if  we  will  all  recognise  the  principles  of 
Christianity  and  live  according  to  the  teachings  of 
Christ,  this  world  shall  be  a  paradise,  where  all  will  be 
wealthy.  Ah!  precisely  that  is  what  is  taught:  all 
shall  be  wealthy.  The  danger  lies  not  in  a  great  in- 
crease of  wealth,  provided  that  wealth  can  be  evenly 
distributed,  provided  we  progress  steadily,  and  have  an 
opportunity  to  become  used  to  our  changed  conditions. 
The  clothes  which  you  and  I  wear,  the  houses  which 
the  plainest  of  us  inhabit,  the  methods  of  locomotion, 
of  which  the  poorest  take  advantage  day  by  day,  are 


272  Modern  Christianity 

luxuries  of  which  our  forefathers  never  dreamed.  Man 
rises  above  the  beasts  and  into  a  higher  spiritual  life 
as  he  does  not  have  to  devote  his  whole  time  to  the 
struggle  for  the  food  with  which  to  fill  his  belly,  when 
his  whole  enjoyment  does  not  consist  in  eating  and 
drinking  and  sleeping,  in  the  indulgence  of  the  merely 
physical  and  sensual  part  of  his  being,  like  the  animals 
about  him.  If  he  is  physically  so  worn  out,  if  he  is 
bodily  so  poorly  fed  that  he  is  always  weary,  it  is  hard 
for  him  to  think  high  thoughts,  it  is  hard  for  the  soul 
to  thrive  in  such  a  body.  There  would  be  no  danger, 
I  take  it,  in  the  great  increase  in  wealth  which  has  come 
in  our  country,  if  that  wealth  were  equally  distributed. 
The  amount  which  would  fall  to  the  lot  of  any  one 
individual  would  not  be  such  as  to  turn  his  head,  to 
tempt  him  to  idleness  and  luxury  and  extravagance. 

The  man  or  the  woman  who  has  great  wealth  almost 
invariably  lives  a  selfish  life.  What  they  give  is  not 
themselves.  They  do  not  know  the  joy  of  service  and 
sacrifice.  Do  you  remember  the  incident  of  the  rich 
men  who  threw  their  gifts  into  the  temple  treasury? 
To  the  simple  apostles  who  stood  about  Jesus,  to  whom 
money  meant  a  great  deal,  it  seemed  a  noble  and  a 
wonderful  thing  that  these  men  should  come  and 
cast  in  gifts  in  one  lump  greater  than  all  they  could 
earn  in  a  year,  or  two  years.  And  then  there  came 
along  a  poor  widow,  who  put  in  the  smallest  amount 
which  the  law  allowed,  two  mites,  and  our  Lord  turned 
their  attention  away  from  those  rich  men  to  this  poor 
widow,  telling  them  that  she  had  given  more  than  any  of 
them,  because  she  had  given  all  she  had.  It  is  not  what 
you  give,  it  is  what  you  have  left.  It  is  not  the  amount 


The  Needle's  Eye  273 

of  the  gift,  it  is  the  service  and  sacrifice  which  are 
in  the  gift.  The  men  or  women  who  are  not  compelled 
to  work  up  to  the  limit  of  their  strength  for  their  daily 
bread,  who  have  perhaps  all  their  time  free  and  yet 
give  but  a  paltry  hour  or  two  a  week  to  the  service 
of  their  fellow  men,  have  given  little  in  proportion  to 
what  they  might  give.  The  conception  which  a  rich 
man  must  have  of  his  goods  is  precisely  that  which  our 
Lord  held  up  before  the  rich  young  man  who  came 
running  and  knelt  at  his  feet.  Sell  all  you  have  and 
give  to  the  poor.  Your  money,  your  time,  your 
intelligence,  your  gifts  of  whatever,  sort  they  be,  those 
you  must  conceive  of  as  means  by  which  you  are  to 
serve  those  who  have  not,  who  are  in  need  of  what 
you  have.  Now  there  is  not  one  rich  man  out  of  a 
thousand,  perhaps  not  one  out  of  many  thousands, 
who  adopts  that  conception  of  the  obligation  of  his 
wealth;  and  there  is  the  danger  of  wealth  to  the 
individual. 

But  then  wealth  itself:  is  it  wrong?  Enormous 
wealth,  what  does  it  mean  ?  How  has  a  man  gotten 
it  ?  Of  course  if  it  is  gotten  through  special  privileges, 
the  exploiting  of  the  many  for  one's  own  advantage; 
if  it  is  gotten  by  those  devices  and  tricks  for  which 
some  one  has  invented  the  admirable  phrase  of 
"law  honesty,"  it  stands  in  itself  condemned.  It  is 
unrighteous.  But  suppose  it  to  be  free  from  such 
taint,  what  then?  This  you  must  take  into  considera- 
tion :  has  the  man  who  has  acquired  it  acquired  it,  as 
it  were,  incidentally,  not  making  wealth  his  aim? 
Has  it  come  to  him  in  living  a  life  of  service?  He  is  a 
great  industrial  captain,  let  us  say.  Has  he  regarded 

18 


274  Modern  Christianity 

his  wonderful  ability  and  the  opportunity  which  God 
has  given  him  as  something  by  which  to  improve  the 
conditions  of  those  about  him  ?  Has  he  striven  for  that 
first  and  foremost,  or  for  that  equally  with  the  profit 
for  himself  and  his  ? 

Now  here  is  the  point:  we  are  children  of  one  family. 
One  may  not  take  for  himself  much  and  leave  little 
to  the  others.  If  he  have  the  greater  ability,  it  is  his 
part  to  use  that  ability  so  that  the  others  may  share 
with  him.  In  general  you  may  say  of  any  great  ac- 
cumulation of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  an  individual: 
it  is  wrong ;  not  necessarily,  however,  in  the  sense  that 
the  man  has  consciously  done  something  which  is 
wicked.  Slave-holding  was  wrong.  The  man  who 
held  slaves  certainly  did  not  regard  them  as  his  bro- 
thers. He  exploited  the  strength,  the  powers  of  his 
fellow  men  for  his  own  comfort  and  convenience.  He 
made  them  work  for  him.  But  in  slave-holding  coun- 
tries the  slave-holder  is  not  necessarily  a  worse  man 
than  the  others  about  him.  The  sense  of  right  and 
wrong  in  this  matter  has  not  been  developed  in  him. 
In  this  country  we  have  passed  beyond  the  days  of 
slave-holding.  The  time  will  come  when  the  same 
principle  which  abolished  slavery  will  be  applied 
still  further.  It  is  not  right  to  exploit  others  for  your 
own  profit.  You  and  they  must  profit  and  share 
together,  otherwise  there  is  no  loving  your  brother  as 
yourself. 

But  some  one  will  say,  That  is  socialism.  It  may  be. 
Insofar  as  socialism  is  the  effort  to  give  equal  oppor- 
tunity, equal  privilege,  equal  share  to  all,  it  is  inspired 
by  the  Christian  ideal.  Christianity  does  not  lay  down 


The  Needle's  Eye  275 

a  programme  and  say:  natural  privileges  and  natural 
monopolies  must  be  held  by  the  community  at  large; 
mining  rights,  franchises,  for  gas  and  electricity,  rail- 
roads, etc.,  must  be  the  property  of  the  state.  That 
may  or  may  not  be  the  best  way  to  attain  the  end 
desired.  Christianity  lays  down  the  very  simple 
principle  of  brotherhood :  we  are  to  love  our  brother  as 
ourself.  Surely,  so  long  as  there  are  the  great  differ- 
ences which  now  exist  between  us,  that  has  not 
been  carried  out.  So  long  as  men  conceive  of  their 
powers  and  their  opportunities  as  things  by  which  they 
are  to  obtain  for  themselves  more  than  others,  and 
so  long  as  they  so  use  them,  the  Christian  principle  is 
not  being  applied  in  society,  and  those  individuals 
have  failed  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  kingdom. 
The  kingdom  of  God  is  not  being  realised  among  us. 
And  here  the  Church  is  at  fault.  The  Church  has 
practically  allied  itself  with  wealth.  The  alienation 
from  the  Church  of  those  very  classes  among  whom  our 
Lord  lived,  among  whom  and  through  whom  He 
founded  the  Church,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Church 
has  in  practice  drifted  away  from  the  fundamental 
principles  of  our  Lord's  teaching.  The  Church  itself 
does  not  believe,  as  it  shows  by  its  practice,  our  Lord's 
teaching.  Stress  needs  to  be  laid  to-day  not  on  the 
literal  meaning  of  doctrinal  formula,  but  on  the  abso- 
lute literalness  of  our  Lord's  demand  that  men  should 
live  not  for  themselves  alone,  that  we  each  of  us  should 
regard  our  fellows  as  brothers;  which  we  certainly  do 
not  now  do. 


TAINTED  MONEY 

ST.  LUKE  xvi.,  15:  That  which  is  highly  esteemed  among 
men  is  an  abomination  in  the  sight  of  God. 

THE  parable  of  the  unjust  steward  pictures  a 
wealthy  man  whose  wealth  consisted  in  agri- 
cultural holdings.  He  was  a  great  landlord.  Such  a 
landlord  was  usually  regarded,  and  very  naturally,  with 
dislike  by  his  tenants.  They  worked  hard  with  their 
hands;  they  lived  poorly;  it  was  a  struggle  to  support 
their  families  with  the  best  that  they  could  do.  And 
here  is  their  landlord  who  does  not,  to  all  appearances, 
himself  work,  but  simply  profits  by  their  work. 
While  they  toil,  he  amuses  himself.  What  they  gain 
from  the  land  by  hard  labour  they  must  share  with  him, 
and  while,  as  the  result  of  their  best  efforts,  they  eke 
out  a  bare  existence,  he  lives  in  ease  or  luxury.  Their 
personal  acquaintance  with  him  in  many  cases  consists 
of  little  more  than  a  glimpse  once  in  a  year  or  once  in 
many  years.  Their  dealings  are  with  his  agent;  and 
it  is  only  too  apt  to  be  the  case  that  the  agent's  value 
is  reckoned  by  the  landlord  according  to  the  amount 
of  rent  which  he  exacts  from  the  tenants.  Anything 
that  the  tenant  can  do  to  relieve  himself  from  these 
exactions  is  allowable  in  his  sight.  In  fact  his  only 
protection,  as  he  sees  it,  is  the  concealment,  if  possible, 

.276 


Tainted  Money  277 

of  the  amount  of  land  cultivated  by  him  and  of  the 
size  of  his  crops,  so  that  he  may  succeed  in  obtaining  a 
larger  share  for  himself.  Any  one  who  will  assist  him 
in  doing  this  is  his  friend. 

In  our  story  the  landlord  learns  that  his  agent  is 
living  extravagantly,  wasting  his  goods.  He  at  once 
calls  upon  him  for  a  reckoning,  as  he  cannot  retain 
in  his  employment  such  an  agent.  Then  comes  that 
picturesque  touch  of  the  steward  considering  with  him- 
self the  outlook.  Thrown  out  of  his  lucrative  and 
comfortable  job,  what  is  it  possible  for  him  to  do? 
There  is  no  chance  of  getting  another  similar  place. 
He  has  never  been  trained  to  work  with  his  hands; 
he  is  not  able  to  dig.  There  is  no  way  in  which  he  can 
earn  a  living.  The  only  outlook  is  dependence  on  the 
alms  of  others;  and  yet,  holding  the  position  which  he 
has  held,  that  seems  to  him  a  shameful  life:  "I  can- 
not dig,  to  beg  I  am  ashamed."  Then  flashes  into 
his  mind  a  shrewd  device.  He  will  make  the  tenants 
believe  that  he  has  been  their  friend,  that  his  dismissal 
is  a  persecution  because  he  has  sought  to  help  them. 
He  calls  them  to  him  and  gives  the  first  his  account. 
1 1  proves  that  there  are  due  i  oo  measures  of  oil.  "  Ah ! 
there  must  be  some  mistake  about  that.  Sit  down  at 
once  and  write  50:  100  measures  of  oil  is  quite  too 
much  for  you  to  pay  on  your  crop."  The  next  man  owes 
100  measures  of  wheat.  "That  is  a  great  deal,  a  great 
deal  for  a  poor  man  who  has  worked  hard  to  raise  that 
wheat  and  who  has  a  family  to  support:  it  does  not 
leave  you  much.  We  will  change  it.  Sit  down  at 
once  and  write  80."  So  it  is  with  all.  Every  one  is  laid 
under  obligation  to  him.  All  are  led  to  suppose  that 


278  Modern  Christianity 

he  is  their  friend,  that  he  is  trying  to  protect  them 
from  the  exactions  of  an  unjust  and  cruel  landlord. 
When  he  is  dismissed,  as  a  matter  of  gratitude  they 
will  take  care  of  him,  and  receive  him  into  their  houses. 
Then,  with  the  liberty  of  a  parable,  the  commendation 
of  the  shrewdness  of  this  man  is  put  into  the  mouth  of 
the  landlord  himself.  He  commends  the  unrighteous 
steward  for  his  shrewdness  and  this  moral  is  drawn 
from  the  tale:  "The  children  of  this  world  are  for  their 
own  generation  wiser  than  the  children  of  light."  Then, 
addressing  himself  to  his  hearers,  Jesus  says:  "  I  advise 
you  to  make  to  yourselves  friends  of  the  mammon  of 
unrighteousness,  that  when  it  fail  the  friends  that  you 
have  made  by  it  may  receive  you  into  the  everlasting 
habitations." 

Does  this  mean  that  we  are  to  use  tainted  money 
to  do  good  with?  That  is  practically  the  interpreta- 
tion that  some  men  have  put  upon  it.  You  will  find 
many  who  justify  and  encourage  the  acquisition  of 
money  by  unrighteous  means,  by  soliciting  from  the 
men  who  have  made  large  fortunes  in  such  ways  con- 
tributions for  charitable  and  benevolent  purposes,  by 
giving  them  places  of  honour  on  the  boards  which  re- 
present their  institutions,  and  by  attaching  their  names 
to  the  benevolences  created  or  endowed  by  their  large 
gifts.  In  answer  to  your  protests  they  say:  "Well,  the 
man  has  not  been  convicted  of  crime.  1 1  is  the  business 
of  the  law,  not  my  business,  to  determine  whether  he 
has  done  right  or  wrong,  and  as  long  as  he  is  not 
convicted  under  the  law  it  is  not  my  part  to  pass 
judgment  upon  him.  Moreover,  however  he  has  ob- 
tained this  money,  the  purpose  for  which  he  is  giving  it 


Tainted  Money  279 

is  a  thoroughly  good  one.  The  money  is  going  to  be 
used  in  a  good  cause,  and  I  believe  that,  even  supposing 
him  to  have  obtained  it  by  methods  which  are  illegiti- 
mate in  the  code  of  ethics,  he  is  doing  more  good  in  this 
expenditure  of  money  than  he  ever  did  harm  in  the 
acquisition  of  it." 

When  big  sums  are  in  question  men  are  apt  to  be- 
come blind  to  the  real  moral  principles.  The  law  is  at 
best  a  crude  instrument.  The  man  who  does  no  more 
than  live  within  the  law  is  a  pretty  poor  specimen.  In 
the  code  of  ethics  there  are  things  which  cannot  be 
reached  by  the  law  which  are  just  as  bad  as  the  things 
which  it  condemns.  In  the  ethical  code  the  man  who 
succeeds  in  depriving  another  of  his  property  without 
exceeding  the  actual  limits  of  legality  is  just  as  much  a 
scoundrel  as  the  man  who  enters  your  house  and  steals 
your  goods.  The  man  who,  in  some  way  or  another, 
contrives  to  possess  himself  of  the  returns  of  the  labour 
of  others,  taking  advantage  of  legal  provisions  to  make 
them  slave  and  sweat  that  he  may  live  in  luxury, 
cannot  be  punished  as  a  slave-holder  under  the  laws  of 
the  land,  but  in  the  sight  of  God  he  is  as  much  a  slave- 
holder as  the  other.  The  principle  is  the  same.  He  is 
grinding  down  and  oppressing  his  brother,  making  him 
work  not  for  the  equal  good  of  both  but  for  himself 
only,  leaving  his  brother  just  enough  to  keep  body  and 
soul  together,  while  he  himself  lives  at  ease.  It  is  not 
the  business  of  the  Christian  to  judge  another  in  the 
sense  of  undertaking  to  cast  him  out,  to  condemn  him 
as  wickeder  than  himself,  but  it  is  his  part  and  pro- 
vince to  refuse  to  honour  and  applaud  the  man  who,  he 
is  convinced,  is  doing  evil,  who  is  acquiring  or  has 


280  Modern  Christianity 

acquired  his  property  by  evading  the  law  or  by  op- 
pressing or  overreaching  his  fellows. 

Take  it  on  a  small  scale.  Suppose  a  man  came  to  you 
with  five  dollars,  which  you  were  convinced  he  had 
purloined  from  the  pockets  of  other  people,  or  which 
he  had  gained  in  gambling,  by  fleecing  some  poor  fool. 
Suppose  this  man  were  to  say  to  you :  "  Here  is  ten  cents 
towards  the  college  of  which  you  are  a  trustee,  here  is 
twenty-five  cents  toward  the  Mission  Board  of  which 
you  are  a  member;  here  is  five  cents  for  the  Law  and 
Order  League  in  which  you  are  interested ;  here  is  ten 
cents  for  the  hospital  with  which  you  are  associated, 
and  here  is  ten  cents  more  for  you  to  use  at  your  discre- 
tion for  any  good  purpose  that  you  see  fit."  Would  you 
pat  that  man  on  the  back  and  say  to  him:  "My  dear 
sir,  you  may  have  gotten  that  money  in  a  pretty  bad 
way;  I  am  not  going  to  inquire  about  that;  I  have  my 
own  suspicions;  but  however  you  got  it  I  want  to  say 
to  you  that  you  have  done  a  noble  thing.  These  gifts 
of  yours  are  going  to  do  great  good,  and  your  name 
shall  be  published  in  connection  with  these  gifts,  be- 
cause your  generosity  ought  to  be  known  to  the  com- 
munity. Yes,  even  if  you  did  some  harm  in  getting 
that  money,  you  are  doing  enough  good  in  the  expendi- 
ture of  it  to  more  than  make  amends." 

Now  no  one  would  say  that  to  the  man  who  only  had 
five  dollars  which  he  had  gotten  in  such  a  way  and  who 
yet  gave  more  than  one  tenth  of  the  whole  amount  for 
benevolent  purposes;  but  it  is  precisely  what  people 
do  say  and  do  in  the  case  of  men  who  have  amassed 
large  fortunes  in  most  questionable  ways  and  who 
contribute  very  often  not  even  a  tenth  of  it  for  such 


Tainted  Money  281 

charitable  and  benevolent  purposes.  The  sums  look 
so  large  that  they  daze  men,  and  so  good  men  and 
Churchmen  have  helped  to  promote  the  unrighteous 
acquisition  of  mammon,  have  helped  to  corrupt  the 
moral  sense  of  the  community. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  are  not  practically  all  great 
fortunes  tainted?  Do  not  our  Lord's  words  "mammon 
of  unrighteousness"  apply  in  a  very  literal  sense  to 
practically  all  wealth  ?  That  is  more  true,  presumably, 
than  many  of  us  have  been  ready  to  recognise.  The 
course  of  events  about  us  is  bringing  it  home  more  and 
more  every  day.  Now  it  is  a  great  telegraph  company 
or  a  great  telephone  company  which  is  in  illicit  partner- 
ship with  gamblers  and  making  great  profits  by  secretly 
furnishing  them  with  the  news  necessary  to  conduct 
their  nefarious  business;  and  the  directors  of  the  com- 
panies engaged  in  this  traffic  are  the  solid  and  highly 
respected  business  men  of  the  city  and  the  country, 
bankers  and  merchants  whose  names  appear  on  the 
lists  of  all  benevolent  enterprises.  Now  an  insurance 
investigation  reveals  to  the  astonished  public  whole- 
sale robbery  of  widows  and  orphans  by  men  of  wealth, 
who  use  the  money  for  speculation,  who  corrupt  legis- 
latures, who  contribute  funds  not  their  own  to  the 
political  bosses  of  either  party.  Now  it  is  a  railroad 
company  convicted  of  violation  of  the  law  and  con- 
spiracy with  some  large  mercantile  trust  for  the  injury 
of  the  public  and  the  benefit  of  the  few,  the  men  who 
stand  at  the  head  of  this  railroad  and  direct  and  permit 
these  things  being  financial,  social,  and  religious  leaders. 
Here  is  a  railroad,  counted  the  perfection  of  good 
management,  whose  officials  are  found  to  be  acquiring 


282  Modern  Christianity 

wealth  by  illegal  trafficking  in  coal  lands,  plundering 
the  public  and  stock-holders  alike,  the  directors  of  the 
road  apparently  conniving.  Here  are  enormous  land 
frauds:  railroads,  industrial  corporations,  and  private 
individuals  seizing  almost  incredibly  vast  areas  of 
public  lands,  hundreds  and  even  thousands  of  men 
enriching  themselves  by  this  wholesale  robbery,  until 
in  certain  sections  of  the  country  the  possession  of  any 
considerable  quantity  of  land  creates  a  presumption 
of  fraud.  Here  are  great  mill  corporations,  with  respect- 
able and  wealthy  men  at  their  heads,  whose  wealth  is 
partly  based  on  the  death  or  ruin  of  little  children  whom 
they  have  employed  to  the  destruction  of  body  and 
soul,  because  by  this  cheaper  labour  they  could  obtain 
a  greater  profit.  Here  are  patent  medicines,  bad  liquor 
and  drugs,  distributed  to  sick  or  ailing  people,  under 
false  names  and  lying  pretences,  with  their  results  of 
death  and  disease,  ruined  constitutions,  drunkenness 
and  the  drug  habit.  There  are  newspapers  deriving 
profit  from  the  lying  advertisements  of  these  things, 
or  even  from  obscene  and  immoral  advertisements. 

The  point  of  it  all  is  not  merely  that  money  has  been 
made  in  this  way,  but  that  so  many  men,  counted  of 
the  highest  respectability,  in  the  best  financial,  social, 
and,  for  that  matter,  Church  standing,  should  be  en- 
gaged in  these  things  and  should  have  made  their 
profit  from  them.  Again  these  men  on  their  part  are 
closely  associated  financially,  socially,  and,  if  one  may 
so  speak,  spiritually,  with  a  vast  number  more  who  have 
profited  with  or  from  them,  or  been  their  partners  or 
supporters. 

Wealth  is  so  tangled  up  with  this  sort  of  thing  that 


Tainted  Money  283 

the  designation  "unrighteous  mammon"  is  a  fair  and 
proper  title.  But  one  may  say,  if  wealth  is  so  tainted, 
what  then?  Can  no  church  and  no  college  and  no 
institution  for  good  work  accept  money  from  these 
sources?  And  do  you  mean  to  include  the  men  who 
have  acquired  wealth  in  such  means  altogether  in  bad- 
ness, shutting  them  up  from  attempting  to  do  any  good 
at  all  ?  Very  far  from  it.  The  objection  is  to  treating 
such  men  as  though  they  were  saints,  receiving  and 
soliciting  from  them  funds  in  a  manner  which  implies 
that  you  regard  them  as  great  benefactors,  connecting 
their  names  with  those  benefactions,  and  so  helping  not 
only  to  condone  but  to  blazon  abroad  their  misdeeds, 
setting  before  the  rising  generation  success  in  the  ac- 
quisition of  money  as  the  one  thing  desirable  to  achieve 
honour  and  distinction  here  and  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  hereafter. 

The  burglar  who  has  robbed  a  house  may  give  some 
of  the  money  which  he  has  stolen  to  benevolent  pur- 
poses; but  you  do  not  tell  the  man  who  has  stolen  $5 
and  gives  fifty  cents  of  it  to  benevolent  purposes  that 
he  is  a  great  and  noble  man,  that  he  is  surely  going  to 
the  kingdom  of  heaven;  and  you  do  not  publish  his 
gift  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  people  at  large  believe 
that  he  is  righteous.  If  you  believed  that  a  man 
who  offered  you  a  small  sum  for  charitable  purposes 
had  obtained  that  money  dishonestly,  you  would 
probably  refuse  to  receive  it;  and  if  he  told  you  that  he 
wanted  to  do  good  and  be  righteous  you  would  tell 
him  the  way  to  do  so  was  first  of  all  to  make  restitu- 
tion, to  give  back  the  money  to  the  person  from  whom 
he  had  obtained  it  by  improper  means;  and  if  he  then 


284  Modern  Christianity 

told  you  that  he  did  not  know  who  the?  real  owners 
were  you  would  tell  him  that  just  the  same  the  money 
was  not  his;  you  might  feel  at  liberty  to  receive  that 
money  for  the  charitable  or  benevolent  works  in  which 
you  were  concerned,  but  you  would  not  agree  to  pub- 
lish his  name  as  a  benefactor. 

But  not  everybody  who  has  tainted  wealth  has  him- 
self put  that  taint  upon  his  wealth.  In  point  of  fact 
good  and  bad  are  so  mixed  together  in  our  dealings, 
financial  as  well  as  social,  that  it  is  not  always  pos- 
sible to  make  sharp  distinctions.  You  may  know  a 
person  holding  stock  which  is  paying  a  large  dividend 
because  the  company  is  despoiling  the  public.  Per- 
haps it  is  a  public  service  corporation,  which  is  failing 
to  live  up  to  its  obligations  and  which  is  exploiting 
the  community  by  means  of  its  political  pull,  making 
life  harder  for  the  poor  man  and  the  poor  woman  by 
exacting  higher  prices  for  their  light,  their  heat,  their 
transportation  or  whatever  it  may  be.  That  person 
may  have  obtained  his  stock  quite  legitimately  and 
innocently,  and  may  be  quite  unaware  of  the  evil-doing 
of  the  company  in  which,  through  possession  of  that 
stock,  he  is  a  member.  Further,  he  may  be  a  generous, 
upright,  and  benevolent  individual,  who  is  doing 
good  with  his  money.  Here  you  have  unrighteous 
mammon,  but  you  do  not  have  a  consciously  unright- 
eous person. 

Similarly  people  inherit  money  which  is  ill-gotten, 
often  themselves  guiltless,  and  unconscious  that  it 
is  ill-gotten.  It  may  come  from  a  father  whom 
they  dearly  loved  and  honoured.  You  would  not 
wish  to  convince  them,  if  you  could,  that  he  was  a 


Tainted  Money  285 

bad  man.  Such  people  may  live  beautiful  lives  and 
make  a  use  of  the  money  which  you  feel  really  atones 
for  the  evil  done  in  getting  it.  We  find  ourselves 
constantly  in  contact  or  association  with  things  on 
which  there  is  a  taint  somewhere,  and  it  is  often  per- 
plexing to  know  what  to  say  or  do.  The  more  a  man 
of  a  tender  conscience  sees  of  the  world  about  him, 
the  more,  I  think,  our  Lord's  words  "unrighteous  mam- 
mon" justify  themselves  to  him  as  literally  correct. 

But  if  we  are  so  tangled  up  with  evil  in  our  relation 
to  this  world's  goods,  what  are  we  to  do?  How  are  we 
to  use  this  unrighteous  mammon  ? 

Our  Lord,  in  His  parable,  did  not  mean  to  commend 
the  unrighteousness  of  the  steward  as  a  thing  for 
our  imitation.  He  set  forth  the  commendableness  of 
the  ingenuity  and  resourcefulness  of  the  steward,  to 
say  to  us:  This  is  the  way  men  deal  in  trying  to 
gain  advantage  for  themselves.  Why  can  not  men 
show  an  equal  ingenuity  and  resourcefulness  in  seek- 
ing to  achieve  good?  And  here  is  the  point  of  our 
Lord's  sarcasm — for  this  parable  is  in  a  sense  sarcastic. 
Men  strive  and  plan  and  use  their  wits  to  gain  for 
themselves  these  perishable  things  and  yet,  although 
professing  to  believe  in  imperishable  things,  in  a 
greater  and  a  larger  life,  how  inert,  indifferent,  and 
unintelligent  they  are  in  the  matters  that  deal  with 
those  things  and  that  life  which  they  profess  to  count 
the  more  important. 

You  see  this  illustrated  in  politics.  Here  is  a  man 
whose  whole  life  is  devoted  to  the  political  game,  for 
the  purpose  of  winning  for  himself  pelf  or  power.  You 
call  him  a  corrupt  politician.  You  wonder  why  he 


286  Modern  Christianity 

is  able  to  exert  such  an  influence  as  he  does  exert,  and 
you  are  rather  inclined  to  attribute  his  success  and  his 
power  to  the  innate  badness  of  the  human  nature  to 
which  he  appeals.  Very  far  from  it.  That  man  makes 
himself  the  friend  and  acquaintance  of  every  one  in 
his  district.  Go  and  watch  his  excursion  in  the  sum- 
mer and  you  will  see  something  of  this.  There  he 
stands,  ready  to  greet  every  man,  woman  or  child  that 
comes  on  board.  He  seems  to  know  them  all  and  to  be 
interested  in  their  affairs:  he  speaks  to  the  women 
about  their  babies;  very  likely  he  sees  that  sterilised 
milk  is  provided  free  for  the  little  children.  The  ex- 
cursion means,  in  pleasure  and  in  health,  a  great 
deal  both  to  the  children  and  their  mothers.  But 
that  is  only  one  of  a  great  number  of  things  in  which 
he  is  concerned.  If  a  man  in  his  district  out  of  work 
comes  to  this  district  politician,  he  makes  it  his  business 
to  secure  him  a  job.  If  a  man  gets  into  trouble,  he 
appeals  to  the  court  for  him.  If  a  family  is  about  to  be 
evicted  for  non-payment  of  rent,  the  woman  comes  to 
him  and  very  likely  he  will  look  out  for  her.  If  a  man 
leaves  his  wife  or  fails  to  support  her,  she  applies  to  the 
leader.  No  one  who  has  not  been  in  touch  with  it 
understands  the  amount  of  time,  care,  and  personal 
attention  which  these  men  give  to  their  constituents, 
or  the  number  of  kind  deeds  which  they  do  for  them. 
It  is  through  the  good  they  do,  not  the  bad,  that  they 
gain  their  power. 

You  may  say  they  do  all  this  from  a  bad  motive; 
it  is  done  simply  for  their  own  advantage.  Largely  that 
is  doubtless  true;  and  at  the  same  time  it  is  impossible 
for  men  to  be  friendly  and  kindly  in  this  way  without 


Tainted  Money  287 

having  some  well-springs  of  humanity  behind  their 
kindness,  or  without  having  some  real  goodness  called 
out  in  them  by  the  effort  to  do  these  things.  But  the 
men  who  denounce  these  men  and  who  lead  efforts  at 
reform  are  unfortunately  too  often,  with  all  their 
uprightness,  lacking  both  in  human  sympathy,  and 
also  in  the  readiness  to  sacrifice  their  other  interests  to 
that  work.  The  ward  politician  is  in  his  place  among 
his  constituents  working  with  them  and  living  with 
them  the  year  through,  winter  and  summer  alike.  The 
man  of  good  character  and  good  position  who  advocates 
reform  in  the  city  administration  is  not  as  a  rule  ready 
to  give  himself  or  his  time  in  any  such  way.  During 
a  considerable  part  of  the  summer  he  is  away  altogether, 
or  at  least  does  not  live  in  town.  At  other  seasons  he 
has  other  interests  and  duties.  Conscientiously  as  he 
desires  to  see  better  conditions,  he  does  not  work  for 
them  with  his  heart  and  soul  like  the  unjust  politician. 
The  man  who  makerany  given  object  the  aim  of  his 
whole  life,  who  throws  himself  into  it  with  all  his  force 
and  power,  is  bound  to  accomplish  something.  A  man 
of  lesser  capacity,  full  of  enthusiasm  for  a  given  object, 
ready  to  live  for  it  and  die  for  it,  will  accomplish  vastly 
more  than  the  man  of  much  greater  ability  to  whom  the 
pursuit  of  that  object  is  a  secondary  consideration,  who 
does  not  throw  himself  into  it,  who  is  not  willing  either 
to  live  or  to  die  for  it.  In  the  case  of  politics,  of  which 
I  have  spoken,  the  ward  politician,  whom  we  so  often 
condemn,  deserves  precisely  that  commendation  which 
our  Lord  gave  to  the  unjust  steward:  "For  the  child- 
ren of  this  world  are  wiser  than  the  children  of  light 
for  their  own  generation."  What  is  true  of  political 


288  Modern  Christianity 

life  is  true  of  work  done  for  charitable  purposes. 
There  are  men  and  women  who  throw  themselves  into 
charitable  work  with  all  their  energy,  but  they  are  very 
few  and  far  between.  Now  such  a  work  requires  the 
greatest  skill,  love,  and  devotion.  There  are  those  who 
give  all  this;  but  I  do  not  think  it  is  unfair  to  say  that 
the  bulk  of  those  who  undertake  such  work  do  not  do 
it  with  the  same  energy,  zeal,  and  devotion  which  they 
would  display  if  they  were  doing  it  for  a  living,  if  their 
career  depended  upon  it,  their  success,  their  honour, 
their  reputation.  They  absent  themselves  from  the  work 
for  reasons  for  which  they  could  not  and  hence  would 
not  absent  themselves  were  they  paid  for  what  they 
do.  If  they  had  to  do  it  for  a  livelihood  they  would  do 
it  very  differently.  That  is  what  our  Lord  meant  by 
His  comparison. 

But  what,  then,  shall  we  do  with  mammon?  Does 
the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  mean  to  take  all  the  joy  and 
beauty  out  of  life?  Is  there  no  good  in  these  worldly 
things?  Are  they  all  tainted  with  evil?  Is  the  world 
so  rotten  and  corrupt  that  we  must  leave  it  and  rush 
off  into  the  wilderness  to  live  there  as  hermits,  or, 
dwelling  here  in  the  midst  of  men,  are  we  to  forego  all 
their  pleasures,  to  assume  an  attitude  of  condemnation, 
to  put  away  from  us  all  the  joy  of  life,  and  devote  our- 
selves to  renunciation  and  denunciation?  Very,  very 
far  from  it.  Beauty  and  pleasure  are  good  things. 
Do  you  remember  how  the  Gospel  tells  of  the  partici- 
pation of  Jesus  in  the  marriage  at  Cana  of  Galilee?  Do 
you  remember  how  he  associated  with  such  a  man  as 
Zacchaeus,  a  rich  man  and  publican,  and  as  such  con- 
demned by  his  neighbours  and  his  fellow-countrymen 


Tainted  Money  289 

as  an  evil-doer?  Jesus  was  at  various  times  a  guest 
at  rich  men's  tables.  He  did  not  refuse  to  go  to  their 
feasts,  nor  did  he  tell  them  that  those  feasts  were 
wicked;  and  equally  He  associated  with  the  publican 
and  the  sinner.  When  a  woman,  taken  in  adultery, 
was  brought  before  Him,  how  touchingly  sympathetic 
and  merciful  the  Lord  was!  There  is  comparatively 
little  of  denunciation  or  of  renunciation,  in  the  sense  of 
rejecting  these  good  things  of  life,  in  our  Lord's  words 
or  acts;  but  He  breathes  a  new  spirit  into  the  treatment 
of  it  all.  Do  you  remember  the  story  told  about  the 
late  King  Ludwig  of  Bavaria,  the  friend  of  Wagner  the 
musician:  how  he  caused  those  wonderful  musical 
performances  to  be  given  for  himself  alone?  A  great 
theatre,  a  lavish  expenditure  of  money,  and  he  sitting 
all  alone  to  hear  it,  shutting  out  every  one  else.  He 
was  mad:  but  there  was  much  in  his  madness  whicrfyou 
see  in  the  attitude  of  multitudes  of  men  and  women 
who  wish  to  keep  their  good  things  to  themselves.  It  is 
the  madness  of  egoism  and  selfishness,  which,  shutting 
them  into  themselves,  shuts  them  out  from  the  true 
joy  of  life.  Take  these  things  and  make  them  the 
means  of  equal  joy  to  those  about  you.  Not  the 
renunciation  of  these  things,  but  such  a  use  of  them 
as  shall  put  new  meaning  into  the  life  of  the  man  who 
uses  them;  their  use  to  promote  the  well-being,  the 
happiness,  the  comfort,  the  joy  of  those  about  us. 

It  would  require  a  new  spirit  in  most  men  to  do  this 
thing?  Precisely,  a  conversion  from  selfishness  to 
true  love.  There  is  the  lack.  Most  of  us  live  our 
lives  for  ourselves,  and  only  in  a  very  secondary  way 
consider  others. 


2  QO  Modern  Christianity 

But  people  are  apt  to  think,  if  they  do  not  say  it, 
that  the  man  who  lives  the  life  of  Christ  in  this  way 
must  become  namby-pamby,  goody-goody;  that  he 
must  lose  his  nerve  and  muscle,  and  that  his  life  must 
be  small,  colourless  and  uninteresting 

Years  ago  an  Eton  lad  heard  a  street  boy,  a  little 
black-a-boots,  ask  God  to  damn  him.  Shocked,  he 
caught  the  little  fellow  and  inquired  what  he  knew 
of  God.  "Oh!  God,"  said  the  little  fellow,  "is  the 
one  that  sends  us  to  hell."  "You  are  way  off  the 
mark,"  said  the  Eton  boy;  but  the  more  he  thought  of 
it  the  less  good  he  felt  there  was  in  talking.  And  so 
by  and  bye  he  had  to  go  and  see  what  these  boys  were 
like,  why  they  said  such  things  and  how  they  could  be 
helped  out  of  it.  He  got  an  old  suit  of  black-a-boots 
clothes,  so  as  to  be  like  them,  and  went  down  under  one 
of  the  bridges  in  London  and  started  a  class  among 
them,  with  a  couple  of  barrels  and  a  candle  as  his  school- 
house.  He  was  an  ordinary  sort  of  a  man  in  most  ways, 
not  a  man  of  genius.  If  he  had  continued  in  the  com- 
mon life  of  his  class,  probably  he  would  have  been  a 
very  humdrum  sort  of  a  person,  content  with  a  small 
and  narrow  life  and  very  small  and  narrow  thoughts 
and  hopes  and  joys.  The  work  to  which  he  gave  him- 
self put  a  new  spirit  into  his  life,  gave  him  a  new  out- 
look. It  meant  sacrifice,  the  giving  up  of  the  things 
which  he  had  been  used  to,  the  loss  of  his  social  stand- 
ing, but  it  meant  the  finding  of  something  infinitely 
better.  Life  became  a  joy  and  a  delight  to  him,  and 
he  himself  became  a  force  in  the  community. 

A  couple  of  years  ago  there  died  in  this  city  a  man 
of  means,  a  business  man  who  accomplished  certain 


Tainted  Money  291 

reforms  and  who  erected  for  himself  an  eternal  monu- 
ment in  the  changed  lives  and  characters  of  many  young 
men  and  women.  That  man  made  his  home  in  a 
tenement  house.  He  lived  with  and  among  the 
people,  sharing  their  life  and  their  pleasures.  So  he 
won  their  confidence.  He  learned  their  methods  and 
the  evils  from  which  they  suffered.  His  consecration 
of  himself  to  that  work  meant,  to  a  very  large  degree, 
his  separation  from  the  ordinary  social  relations  and 
conditions  of  his  class;  and  this  resulted  not  in  a  nar- 
rowing but  an  enlarging  of  his  life.  Anyone  who  met 
him  felt  at  once  that  he  was  a  man  worth  knowing,  a 
man  of  force;  and  he  had  become  so  largely  by  virtue 
of  the  work  which  he  was  doing  and  the  life  he  was 
living  among  those  tenement  dwellers.  Under  other 
conditions  he  would  probably  have  been  one  of  the 
ordinary  herd  of  men. 

What  our  Lord  proposes  to  us  is  the  development 
of  the  powers,  the  possibilities  that  are  in  us  for  great 
things.  He  would  not  have  us  be  content  with  some- 
thing small.  He  opens  out  to  us  greater  possibilities 
of  joy  by  opening  out  greater  possibilities  of  living. 

I  have  taken  as  my  text  the  words  which  our  Lord 
added  in  the  conversation  that  followed  the  telling 
of  the  parable  of  the  unjust  steward.  The  Pharisees 
derided  and  mocked  at  Him.  Perhaps  some  of  you  are 
familiar  with  the  little  poem  by  Mrs.  Charlotte  Per- 
kins Stetson,  entitled  "Similar  Cases,"  in  which  she 
genially  caricatures  the  way  in  which  all  reformers  and 
reforms  have  been  scoffed  at  from  the  beginning:  a  little 
five-toed  animal  no  bigger  than  a  fox,  that  declared 
he  was  going  to  be  a  horse,  at  which  the  "heavy 


292  Modern  Christianity 

aristocracy"  of  those  "days  of  long  ago"  first  mocked, 
then  grew  wrathful,  and  at  last  sought  to  kill  the  bold 
reformer,  who  ran  counter  to  their  prejudices  and 
threatened  to  overturn  the  foundations  of  society 
"  in  the  early  eocene. "  Then  there  was  an  anthropoid 
ape,  far  smarter  than  the  rest,  who  was  going  to  be  a 
man  and  stand  upright  and  hunt  and  fight.  He  was 
going  to  cut  down  forest  trees  and  going  to  build  a  fire; 
but  his  fellow  apes  pelted  him  with  cocoanuts  and 
arguments.  The  thing  cannot  be  done,  and,  in  the 
second  place,  if  it  could  be  done,  it  had  better  not  be 
done;  and,  in  the  third  place,  to  do  it  would  involve  a 
complete  change  of  nature.  Then  there  was  a  neolithic 
man,  who,  not  content  with  the  conditions  of  his  times, 
looked  forward  to  civilisation,  when  men  should  live 
in  cities  and  life  should  be  turned  upside  down,  and 
all  his  comrades  rose  in  fury  against  their  boastful 
and  radical  friend;  and  their  final  argument  was  that 
it  was  impossible,  for  this  would  mean  a  change  in 
human  nature.  All  reform  means  a  change  in  hu- 
man nature,  and  above  all  reformers  Jesus  came  to 
cause  and  promote  a  great  change  in  human  nature, 
namely,  that  man  might  be  in  very  truth  in  the  image 
of  God  and  that  man  might  live  indeed  in  the  kingdom 
of  heaven. 

The  writer  of  St.  Luke's  Gospel  says  that  the  Phari- 
sees scoffed  at  Jesus  because  they  were  covetous, 
lovers  of  silver.  With  all  their  professions  of  strict- 
ness, their  invention  of  more  difficult  and  minute 
interpretations  of  the  law,  it  was  self  and  self-service 
which  lay  behind  it  all;  and  they  were  concerned  much 
more  with  wjjat  men  thought  of  them,  with  their  posi- 


Tainted  Money  293 

tion  in  the  world,  than  with  what  God  thought  of  them, 
their  position  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  "  Ye  are  they 
that  make  yourselves  righteous  before  men,  but  God 
knoweth  your  hearts;  because  that  which  is  highly 
esteemed  among  men  is  an  abomination  in  the  sight 
of  God.'1  The  wealth,  the  fine  houses,  the  beautiful 
pictures  and  sculptures,  the  collections  of  books,  the 
cultured  and  refined  manners  which  set  a  man  apart 
from  those  about  him  and  lead  them  to  regard  him 
with  envy  and  admiration, — these  things,  so  highly 
esteemed  in  the  sight  of  men,  are  an  abomination  in 
the  sight  of  God  if  and  insofar  as  the  man  who  has 
them  has  acquired  them  and  administers  them  for 
himself,  if  and  insofar  as  he  is  not  sharing  them, 
making  their  advantages  felt  among  men.  Society 
tends  to  form  itself  on  a  selfish  model.  Who  does  good 
for  himself  him  men  count  great  and  worthy. 

The  inclination  of  worldly  society  everywhere  has 
been  to  give  the  highest  rank  and  place  to  the  man  or 
woman  who  does  not  need  to  work  and  who  does  not 
work,  because  of  what  his  father,  or  his  grandfather, 
or,  better  still,  his  remote  ancestors  have  achieved 
and  acquired.  Now  it  is  a  fine  thing  for  any  man  or 
woman  to  be  able  to  look  back  and  say:  "My  father 
and  my  grandfather  and  my  ancestors  for  many 
generations  before  me  have  done  noble  things.  They 
have  achieved  distinction,  they  have  passed  down  to 
me  a  position  of  honour  and  power/'  But  this  rank  or 
position,  which  men  hold  high,  is  an  abomination  in  the 
sight  of  God — if  a  man  or  woman  rest  content  with 
that.  There  are  few  things  more  contemptible  than 
the  decayed  scion  of  a  noble  house  who  can  do 


294  Modern  Christianity 

nothing  but  tell  you  of  the  past,  because  he  had  him- 
self achieved  nothing.  The  honour  of  birth  involves 
a  great  responsibility — that  to  the  achievement  of  the 
men  of  the  past  the  man  of  the  present  add  his  con- 
tribution of  still  higher  service.  The  man  or  the  woman 
who,  having  inherited  means,  is  content  to  do  nothing, 
may  be  highly  esteemed  among  men,  but  such  a  life 
is  an  abomination  in  the  sight  of  God.  The  value  of 
means  thus  handed  down  is  that  the  man  or  woman 
set  free  from  the  necessity  of  toiling  for  the  bread  he 
eats  may  enter  into  the  great  glory  and  happiness  of 
toiling  for  the  uplift  of  others.  This  is  the  use  of  un- 
righteous mammon  which  our  Lord  means:  that  men 
or  women  who  possess  birth,  place,  means,  should 
devote  the  same  energy,  ingenuity,  zeal,  and  earnest, 
hard  service  to  the  uplift  of  those  about  them  which 
less  fortunate  persons  are  compelled  to  devote  to 
earning  a  living  for  themselves  and  their  families. 

The  rule  of  God's  kingdom  is  effort  and  work,  not 
idleness  and  ease;  service  and  sacrifice,  not  comfort  and 
indulgence.  Some  He  has  set  in  a  position  where  they 
must  toil  and  strive  with  all  their  might  to  earn  their 
daily  bread.  Others  He  has  set  in  a  position  where 
they  do  not  need  to  toil  and  strive  for  their  own  sus- 
tenance. To  these  latter  He  has  given  both  a  great 
privilege  and  a  mighty  responsibility.  The  man  or 
woman,  set  in  such  a  place,  who  feels  himself  therefore 
absolved  from  the  obligation  of  toil,  has  mistaken  the 
very  meaning  of  life  from  God's  point  of  view.  That 
ease  and  comfort  of  well-being  which  win  distinction 
and  position  in  the  society  of  the  world  are  an  abomina- 
tion and  an  offence  in  the  sight  of  God. 


RESPECTABLES  AND  PUBLICANS 

ST.  MATTHEW  xxi.,  31:  The  publicans  and  the  harlots  go 
into  the  kingdom  of  God  before  you. 

THE  conditions  under  which  our  Lord  is  reported 
to  have  uttered  these  words  are  as  follows: 
When  He  was  teaching  in  the  Temple  the  chief  priests 
and  elders  of  the  people  came  and  demanded  the  au- 
thority by  which  He  spoke.  They  were  the  authorised 
religious  chiefs  of  the  people.  He  was  undertaking 
to  give  instruction  in  the  Temple.  It  was  natural  and 
proper  that  they  should  question  into  the  authority 
by  which  He  undertook  to  teach  there.  In  reply  He 
asked  them  which  side  they  took  with  regard  to  the 
baptism  of  John.  Was  it  human,  or  was  it  God-given  ? 
Was  John  an  inspired  leader,  a  prophet  sent  from 
God,  or  was  he  a  misleader,  a  demagogue  or  a  fana- 
tic? After  some  questioning  among  themselves,  they 
answered  that  they  were  not  prepared  to  say.  They 
were,  to  use  our  colloquial  expression,  "on  the  fence." 
If  they  were  to  say  that  John  was  not  a  prophet  in- 
spired by  God,  they  could  not  carry  the  people  with 
them.  On  the  other  hand,  if  they  said  that  John  was 
an  inspired  prophet,  Jesus  could  very  legitimately  ask 
them  why  they  had  not  showed  themselves  his  follow- 
ers. Between  the  two  horns  of  the  dilemma,  they  took 
the  position  of  declining  to  commit  themselves.  Then 

295 


296  Modern  Christianity 

Jesus  refused  to  tell  them  by  what  authority  He  did 
these  things.  If  they  did  not  know  by  what  authority 
John  spoke,  they  were  incompetent  to  judge  His 
authority. 

Then  He  addresses  to  them  this  very  pointed  para- 
ble: "Once  there  was  a  man  that  had  two  sons,  and  he 
came  to  the  first  and  said,  'Son,  go,  work  to-day  in  the 
vineyard/  He  answered  and  said,  'I  will  not';  but 
afterwards  he  repented  and  went.  He  came  to  the 
second  son  and  said  likewise,  and  he  answered  and 
said,  'I  go,  sir/  and  went  not."  The  publicans  and 
sinners  had  not  kept  the  law.  They  were  not  re- 
spectable, but  when  John  came  preaching  repentance 
they  had  flocked  out  in  great  numbers  and  been  bap- 
tised in  the  Jordan,  confessing  and  repenting  their 
sins.  John  had  brought  them  the  message  of  right 
living,  the  message  of  the  old  prophets,  that  a  man 
should  do  justly  towards  his  neighbour  and  love  mercy, 
and  those  men  who  were  not  respectable,  the  publi- 
cans and  sinners,  had  responded,  while  the  men  who 
claimed,  to  be  the  religious  leaders  of  the  people  had 
given  him  no  support  whatsoever. 

And  Jesus,  in  His  turn,  found  Himself  criticised, 
opposed,  and  distrusted  by  the  religious  leaders 
of  the  people,  the  priests  and  the  elders,  the  scribes 
and  the  Pharisees.  The  publicans  and  sinners  heard 
Him  gladly.  They  became  His  followers.  And  so 
He  addresses  this  scathing  denunciation  to  these  re- 
ligious leaders  of  the  people:  "The  publicans  and  the 
harlots  go  into  the  kingdom  of  God  before  you.  For 
John  came  unto  you  in  the  way  of  righteousness, 
and  ye  believed  him  not;  but  the  publicans  and 


Respectables  and  Publicans       297 

> 

the  harlots  believed  him:  and  ye,  when  ye  had  seen 
it,  repented  not  afterward,  that  ye  might  believe 
him." 

I  need  scarcely  remind  you  that  this  is  not  an  isolated 
utterance.  We  find  the  same  thing  over  and  over  again 
in  our  Lord's  reported  sayings.  Now  it  is  the  two  men 
praying  in  the  temple.  The  one  is  a  Pharisee,  a  re- 
spectable, godly  Churchman,  quite  content  with  the 
life  that  he  is  living,  satisfied  that  he  is  a  good  man. 
There  is  put  into  his  mouth  the  prayer  which  was  then, 
as  it  is  now,  the  real  heart  utterance  of  many  such  a 
man;  perhaps  not  what  he  says  in  the  ears  of  those 
about  him,  or  what  he  actually  says  in  the  words  which 
he  utters  to  God,  but  the  thought  which  lies  behind 
those  words,  his  real  prayer,  his  real  manner  of  address 
to  God,  what  he  thinks  of  himself,  and  his  idea  of  what 
God  thinks  of  him:  "Lord,  I  thank  thee  that  I  am  not 
as  other  men,  extortioners,  unjust,  adulterers,  or  even 
as  this  publican.  I  fast  twice  in  the  week,  I  give  tithes 
of  all  that  I  possess."  And  the  publican,  standing 
afar  off,  would  not  lift  up  so  much  as  his  eyes  unto 
heaven,  but  smote  upon  his  breast,  saying,  "God  be 
merciful  to  me  a  sinner!"  The  publican,  our  Lord 
tells  us,  was  the  man  who  was  justified  in  the  sight  of 
God,  not  the  Pharisee.  The  ward  politician,  the 
political  grafter,  if  you  were  to  find  the  corresponding 
terms  and  ideas  for  publican  in  our  life  of  to-day,  was 
counted  righteous  rather  than  the  irreproachable 
Churchman,  who  knew  his  Bible,  kept  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments, went  to  church  and  contributed  regularly 
to  its  support. 

The  famous  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  introduces 


298  Modern  Christianity 

you  to  two  brothers.  One  of  them  staid  at  home  with 
his  father,  and  was  a  decent,  respectable  member  of 
society.  The  other  was  a  rake  and  a  vagabond,  who 
squandered  all  he  had  in  dissipation  and  at  last  landed 
in  the  gutter.  And  yet  it  is  for  this  man  that  our  Lord 
seems  to  claim  our  regard.  As  the  result  of  the  very 
extremity  of  his  misery,  he  comes  fearfully  back  to  his 
father's  house  with  the  intention  of  begging  to  be 
allowed  to  work  as  a  hired  man.  His  father  falls  on 
his  neck  and  embraces  him,  treats  him  with  the  greatest 
honour,  makes  a  banquet  for  him.  The  decent,  re- 
spectable elder  brother  objects.  Why,  this  is  a  good- 
for-nothing  fellow,  who  has  squandered  everything 
in  a  most  disgraceful  life,  and  yet,  just  as  soon  as  he 
comes  back,  you  honour  him,  bestow  your  good  things 
on  him,  treat  him  in  fact  as  you  never  treated  me.  We 
all  feel  that  there  is  somehow  more  chance  for  that 
good-for-nothing  vagabond  than  for  this  hard,  stony, 
self-righteous  egoist. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  our  Lord's  parables  that  we  find 
such  teaching.  His  acts  express  the  same  thing. 
The  religious  leaders  complain  of  Him,  over  and  over 
again,  as  the  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners.  He  is 
quite  willing  to  keep  company  with  and  actually  to  sit 
down  at  meat  with  these  low-lived  grafters,  or  even 
with  disreputable  women,  as  though  he  were  their 
bosom  friend.  He  makes  Himself  one  of  their  circle. 
Once,  you  remember,  He  was  dining  at  the  house  of  a 
Pharisee,  when  a  poor,  wretched,  fallen  woman  con- 
trived to  get  in  and  embrace  His  feet.  You  remember 
how  shocked  the  good  Pharisees  were  at  the  occurrence 
and  at  Jesus'  attitude  towards  her.  Either  He  did  not 


Respectables  and  Publicans       299 

seem  to  know  what  sort  of  a  woman  she  was,  or  else 
He  did  not  seem  to  care.  Then,  you  recollect,  He  ex- 
plained to  Simon  the  situation  from  His  point  of  view. 
Simon  had  invited  Him  to  dinner,  apparently  just  to 
satisfy  his  curiosity  and  that  of  his  friends,  and  then 
grossly  insulted  Him.  The  other  guests  he  had 
greeted  with  the  ordinary  kiss  of  welcome.  He  had 
given  them  water  to  wash  their  feet.  But  Jesus  was 
not  of  his  class,  and  in  the  selfishness  and  egotism  of 
his  social  respectability  he  could  not  quite  bring  him- 
self to  treat  Him  as  he  treated  the  guests  of  his  own 
sort.  He  had  stabbed  Him  just  where  men  are  most 
sensitive,  in  His  feelings,  making  Him  evident  as  an 
inferior.  Now  that  is  one  of  the  most  cruel  things 
that  a  man  or  a  woman  can  do.  It  hurts  more  than  if 
you  had  struck  a  man  a  blow.  Nobody  who  is  full  of 
real,  tender,  human  sympathy  can  do  such  a  thing  as 
that.  Any  one  who  has  the  real  spirit  of  brotherliness 
in  him  must  involuntarily  put  himself  in  the  place  of 
others  and  treat  them  as  he  would  like  to  be  treated 
himself.  The  egoist  does  not  do  this  because  he  thinks 
only  of  himself.  This  man,  of  the  same  race  and 
the  same  religion  as  Jesus,  His  brother,  a  son  of  Abra- 
ham, like  Him  one  of  the  chosen  people  of  Israel, 
invited  Him  to  dinner,  and  there,  in  the  presence  of  all 
the  guests,  treated  Him  in  this  insulting  manner. 
Then  there  comes  a  poor,  sinful  creature,  who  has 
gotten  in  somehow,  throws  herself  at  His  feet,  kisses 
them  in  an  agony  of  devotion,  bathes  them  with  her 
tears  and  wipes  them  with  the  hair  of  her  head.  Which 
is  the  better  to  Him?  To  which  must  His  heart  go 
out;  and  to  which  does  the  heart  of  God  go  out? 


300  Modern  Christianity 

"He  who  does  not  love  his  brother  whom  he  has  seen, 
how  shall  he  love  God  whom  he  has  not  seen  ? " 

That  social  question — how  it  comes  in!  You  have 
another  story  of  how  Jesus  was  invited  to  a  Pharisee's 
house.  Now,  Jesus  was  a  plain  man  of  the  people. 
He  did  not  know  the  niceties  of  the  social  etiquette 
of  the  "four  hundred  "  of  His  day,  and  so  it  came  about 
that  He  did  not  follow  their  rule  of  the  formal  ablution 
of  the  hands  before  dinner.  But  that  was  the  all- 
important  thing  in  their  eyes.  The  man  who  did  not 
know  their  manners  and  their  customs  was  not  a 
gentleman.  They  had  no  ears  for  anything  that  He 
might  say,  no  eyes  for  anything  that  He  might  do 
after  that:  that  damned  Him  in  their  sight. 

I  might  go  on  indefinitely  multiplying  instances. 
The  Gospel  is  full  of  them.  Turn  to  the  end.  At 
last  it  was  the  respectable,  church-going,  God-fearing 
leaders  of  the  people,  the  chief  priests  and  the  elders 
and  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  who  put  Him  to  death  on 
the  Cross;  and  the  one  man  that  stood  by  Him  there 
was  an  outcast,  a  criminal,  a  thief.  It  is  a  most  pitiful 
tale:  the  multitude  mocking  and  scoffing  at  Him:  "  If 
thou  be  the  Christ,  the  King  of  Israel,  come  down  from 
the  Cross!"  It  is  easy  to  follow  the  crowd.  Most  of 
us  do  it.  Partly  our  judgment  is  carried  away  by  the 
contagion  of  their  action,  partly  we  are,  most  of  us, 
moral  cowards;  we  do  not  dare  to  stand  up  all  by 
ourselves  against  the  multitude.  And  so  one  of  the 
thieves  crucified  with  Him  began  to  rail  at  Him  and 
mock  at  Him  like  the  rest:  "If  thou  be  the  Christ, 
come  down  from  the  Cross;  if  thou  be  the  Christ,  save 
thyself  and  us!"  The  other  thief  rebuked  him.  They 


Respectables  and  Publicans       301 

indeed  deserved  their  condemnation,  but  this  man 
had  done  nothing  worthy  of  death.  That  thief  might 
have  been  a  bad  man,  he  might  have  committed  many 
crimes,  but  he  had  not  lost  the  spirit  of  true  manliness. 
He  dared  to  stand  up  against  the  multitude;  and  what  is 
more,  he  had  not  lost  that  which  is  the  most  divine 
thing  in  man,  the  spirit  of  sympathy  and  love.  I  think 
that  people  make  a  mistake  when  they  suppose  this 
thief  to  have  been  converted  on  the  Cross,  in  the  sense 
that  he  there  recognised  Jesus  as  the  Christ  who  was 
expected,  the  King  of  Israel.  He  was  converted  in  the 
sense  that  he  recognised  the  needs  of  the  man  suffering 
there  by  his  side,  that  he  forgot  himself  and  his  own 
suffering  in  the  needs  of  some  one  suffering  more  than 
he  was,  that  he  put  himself  in  that  man's  place  with 
the  truest  and  deepest  sympathy.  That  man  supposed 
He  was  a  King?  Then  he  would  recognise  Him  as  a 
King  now,  when  He  so  sorely  needed  that  support 
for  the  preservation  of  some  shred  of  His  self-respect. 
And  so  he  asks  Jesus  to  remember  him  when  He  comes 
into  His  kingdom.  That  is  the  truest  conversion: 
not  the  conversion  to  the  name  but  the  conversion 
to  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  And  so  it  was  that  Jesus  could 
answer  that  poor  criminal,  "This  day  shalt  thou  be 
with  me  in  paradise."  It  was  precisely  of  such  men, 
in  spite  of  all  their  faults  and  crimes,  that  His  king- 
dom should  be  formed. 

And  there  you  have  the  very  foundation  of  the  mat- 
ter, the  reason  why  Jesus  shows  this  apparent  sym- 
pathy with  the  publican  and  sinner  over  against  the 
respectable  man.  It  is  not  that  respectability  is  an 
objectionable  thing.  Very  much  the  opposite:  it  is 


302  Modern  Christianity 

eminently  a  good  thing  and  a  thing  to  be  desired.  A 
man  ought  to  keep  all  the  Commandments:  Thou  shalt 
not  kill;  thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery;  thou  shalt 
not  steal.  He  ought  not  to  do  any  of  these  things,  and 
he  ought  not  to  do  many  more  besides  and  he  is  a  very 
much  better  man  because  he  does  not  do  them,  and  the 
world  is  very  much  better  as  it  learns  not  to  do  these 
things.  But  if  a  man  do  none  of  these  things  and  yet 
have  not  love,  to  use  St.  Paul's  term,  "It  profiteth 
him  nothing."  He  is  not  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
He  cannot  enter  into  the  joy  of  life  eternal.  The  man 
that  has  broken  these  Commandments  and  yet  in 
whom  the  spirit  of  love  is  not  dead  is  a  better  man  than 
he.  These  other  things  are  only  the  case,  to  guard  that 
treasure  of  love.  The  real  thing  is  love,  and  the 
danger  of  respectability  is  just  this,  that  it  is  apt  to 
concern  itself  with  the  case.  It  builds  it  up  and  adorns 
it  and  fastens  it  up  so  tight  that  it  never  can  be  opened, 
no  breath  of  air  can  ever  get  in,  and  the  spirit  of  love 
for  which  the  case  was  meant  is  choked  to  death. 

You  find  something  of  this  exaltation  of  the  case  at 
the  expense  of,  or  even  to  the  destruction  of  its  contents 
in  every  phase  of  the  history  of  our  religion.  Jesus 
came  to  reveal  God  to  men  as  the  God  of  love,  to  leave 
with  men  that  spirit  of  love  which  should  lead  them  to 
Him  and  to  the  Father.  You  have  in  the  Bible  a 
record  of  it  all,  the  story  of  how,  through  generation 
after  generation  and  century  after  century,  the  Spirit 
of  God  was  brooding  over  men  and  stirring  men's 
hearts  to  seek  righteousness  and  mercy.  You  see  a 
spiritual  life  growing  from  small  beginnings,  developing, 
line  upon  line,  precept  upon  precept.  It  is  a  long  and 


Respectables  and  Publicans       303 

tedious  struggle,  a  thousand  years  of  it  and  more, 
until  a  wonderful  religion  has  grown  up.  And  then 
the  religious  leaders  want  to  stop  this  development  and 
call  a  halt.  The  dead  record  of  what  has  been  be- 
comes their  religion:  and  when  a  live  prophet,  like  John 
the  Baptist  or  Jesus  the  Christ,  comes  preaching  the 
living  word  of  God,  those  leaders  of  the  Church  cannot 
understand  it.  They  are  concerned  with  preserving 
the  case  in  which  they  have  shut  up  and  are  stilling  the 
spirit  of  the  prophets  of  long  ago.  They  have  for- 
gotten that  there  is  anything  within  that  case;  it  has 
become  the  real  thing  to  them.  John  opens  the  lid 
and  reveals  the  live  spirit  within.  But  they  do  not  see 
the  spirit,  they  do  not  care  for  that.  They  are  only 
distressed  that  the  lid  of  their  precious  treasure  case 
is  opened,  they  want  to  close  it.  They  do  not  perceive 
the  divine  in  John's  message.  So,  also,  when  Jesus 
comes  they  cannot  hear  the  word  of  God  in  His  words, 
they  cannot  feel  the  breath  of  the  Spirit  in  His  teach- 
ing. 

Time  passes,  and  the  Christian  Church  makes  a 
similar  experience.  I  think  that  to-day,  and  among 
us,  even,  there  are  men  and  women  who  let  the  Bible 
stand  between  them  and  Jesus  Christ.  To  others,  it  is 
creeds,  sacerdotal  order,  or  the  sacraments  which  have 
come  between  them  and  Christ.  The  sacraments  are 
the  outward  form  through  which  the  inner  life  should 
be  given.  But  what  a  ghastly  irony  there  was  in  the 
profession  of  true  belief  in  those  sacraments  by  people 
who  were  murdering  one  another  because  they  did  not 
agree  about  the  explanation  of  them!  The  explana- 
tion had  become  more  valuable  than  the  sacrament. 


3°4  Modern  Christianity 

So  it  has  been  with  sacerdotal  order,  so  it  has  been  with 
creeds  and  formularies;  and  the  more  beautiful  your 
creeds  and  formularies,  the  greater,  I  had  almost  said, 
the  danger.  And  just  because  we  have  such  beautiful 
creeds  and  formularies,  such  noble  forms  and  cere- 
monies, we  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  are 
especially  in  danger  of  letting  our  respectability  and 
decency  in  these  matters  become  a  case  to  seal  up  and 
suffocate  the  spiritual  life. 

But  religion  does  not  consist  only  in  those  things 
which  you  and  I  call  by  the  name  of  religion.  Our 
real  religion  is  that  which  we  practise  in  our  lives. 
Perhaps  I  might  say  that  the  thing  which  is  most  real, 
most  precious  to  you,  is  in  reality  your  religion;  it 
may  be  social  forms,  it  may  be  money-getting,  but 
that  is  really  your  religion.  We  do  not  always  realise 
just  what  our  religion  is. 

One  day  I  was  dining  with  the  Turkish  governor  of 
an  outlying  province  on  the  edge  of  the  desert.  In  fact 
I  had  just  come  in  from  the  desert  and  had  as  guide  and 
companion  an  Arab  tribesman.  At  dinner  there  was 
the  usual  central  dish  on  the  table,  from  which  we 
were  all  to  help  ourselves.  The  governor  and  my 
Arab  tribesman  helped  themselves  with  their  hands  out 
of  the  dish.  There  on  the  border  the  governor  was 
in  all  his  habits  and  uses  like  the  Arab  tribesman ;  only 
he  knew  that  his  customs  in  these  regards  were  different 
from  the  customs  in  the  centres  of  civilisation,  and  so 
he  felt  it  necessary  to  make  some  explanation,  which 
explanation  consisted  in  telling  me  that  he  too  knew 
how  to  eat  with  a  spoon  like  a  Frank,  but  that  it  was 
his  religion  to  eat  with  his  fingers.  That  is,  it  was  his 


Respectables  and  Publicans       305 

tradition,  the  etiquette  he  was  used  to,  it  was  bred  in 
him,  so  that  it  would  be  a  shock  and  an  offence  to  him 
to  do  something  different.  Now  that  was  a  true  use  of 
the  word  religion,  even  if  an  unconscious  one.  The 
clothes  we  wear,  the  manners  with  which  we  greet  one 
another,  the  way  in  which  we  eat  our  food,  become 
to  us  tests  of  our  own  worth  and  the  worth  of  those 
about  us.  It  is  necessary  and  desirable  that  we  should 
have  forms,  customs,  etiquette;  but  these  things  are 
after  all  but  the  case,  and  the  continual  danger  is  lest  we 
make  them  the  real  thing  and  thus  seal  up  and  finally 
suffocate  the  life  which  is  the  treasure  the  case  was 
meant  to  protect  and  preserve.  It  is  precisely  this 
sort  of  respectability,  both  in  what  we  commonly  call 
our  religion,  and  also  in  that  greater  and  broader  reli- 
gion of  the  traditions  and  customs  and  habits  of  our 
daily  life,  the  substituting  of  the  dead  outward  case 
for  the  live  thing  within,  which  is  the  danger  we  must 
avoid.  If  you  stifle  that  spirit  of  life  and  love  in  the 
case  of  respectability,  then  you  inevitably  develop  a 
cold,  hard,  selfish,  unsympathetic  nature,  both  in  the 
individual  and  in  the  community. 

The  mere  "Do  not  do  this,"  "Do  not  do  that,"  of 
the  commandments  of  respectability,  is  eminently 
selfish.  Do  not  do  it,  why?  Because  the  doing  of  it 
will  throw  you  out  of  society,  will  bring  punishment 
upon  you,  will  prevent  your  development?  Those  are 
entirely  selfish  motives,  and  however  good  the  thing 
you  do  or  do  not  do  is  in  itself,  the  selfish  motive  of 
mere  respectability  with  which  you  do  it  will  ultimately 
harden  your  heart  and  prevent  the  true  development 
of  the  divine  nature  within  you.  Do,  or  abstain  from 

90 


306  Modern  Christianity 

doing  those  things,  for  another  motive,  because  to 
murder,  to  commit  adultery,  to  steal  is  to  bring  suffer- 
ing or  harm  or  loss  on  some  one  else  or  on  the  commu- 
nity; do  or  abstain  from  doing  them  for  another's  sake 
and  there  is  developed  in  you  more  and  more  of  that 
divine  spirit  of  love  and  compassion  which  leads  to  a 
higher  and  greater  righteousness,  to  a  living,  quicken- 
ing righteousness.  It  was  against  that  selfishness  and 
hollowncss  and  unreality  of  the  religious  forms  and 
practices  of  the  religious  leaders  of  His  day  that  our 
Lord  was  so  constantly  protesting.  Your  respectable 
man  does  the  thing  just  because  it  is  the  correct  thing. 
He  rests  on  the  basis  of  what  people  say,  what  people 
do,  what  people  think.  He  tries  to  conform  to  the 
proper  use.  He  would  not  like  to  do  anything  that 
is  out  of  the  ordinary  form  and  custom.  He  never  can 
let  himself  go,  he  never  can  be  really  himself.  Indeed 
it  is  very  doubtful  whether  he  has  a  self;  he  is  the  echo 
of  what  he  sees  and  hears  about  him. 

Among  the  delights  of  my  childhood  was  a  book 
called,  I  think,  Arabian  Days,  a  translation,  I  judge, 
of  some  German  work.  Out  of  that  book  I  remember 
one  story  to  this  day.  I  had  no  idea  of  its  moral  at 
the  time,  but  it  was  its  moral  which  really  fixed  it  in 
my  mind  and  brings  it  to  my  remembrance.  It 
was  evidently  written  in  the  days  of  Anglo-mania  in 
Germany,  after  the  revolutionary  period  of  1848. 
Everybody  sought  to  do  what  was  English,  to  wear 
English  clothes,  to  have  English  manners,  drink  tea 
after  the  English  fashion,  etc.,  etc.;  and  nobody  was 
esteemed  anything  in  the  little  town  in  which  the 
story  was  laid  unless  he  imitated  the  English  in  some 


Respectables  and  Publicans       307 

manner.  A  certain  cynical  gentleman,  disgusted  by 
the  unreality  of  all  this,  introduced  to  the  community, 
as  his  guest,  a  young  Englishman,  a  somewhat  un- 
couth looking  individual,  with  a  hairy  face  and 
strange  manners  and  ungainly  gestures,  who  could  not 
speak  the  German  language.  Nevertheless,  every 
one  was  charmed  to  hear  his  strange  utterances;  and, 
as  for  his  manners,  why,  the  very  roughness  of  them 
proved  him  to  be  of  the  best  English  type;  and  forth- 
with every  one  hastened  to  imitate  his  dress,  his  tone, 
his  bearing,  his  eccentricities.  He  was  guilty  of  strange 
excesses,  but  these  were  not  only  condoned,  they  were 
imitated.  At  last,  one  day,  his  cynical  host  disap- 
peared, leaving  the  young  Englishman  and  a  note 
behind.  The  young  Englishman  proved  to  be  an  ape 
which  he  had  half-way  trained  into  the  semblance  of 
humanity.  It  is  a  cynical  story,  and  yet  it  is  true  that 
many  people  would  think  the  manners  and  even  the 
religion  of  an  ape  quite  the  right  thing  to  imitate,  if 
only  he  were  properly  introduced. 

People  are  apt  to  read  the  Bible  without  a  sufficient 
reference  of  its  words  and  its  teachings  to  their  own 
time  and  their  own  individual  case.  You  and  I, 
respectable  and  God-fearing  Churchmen  of  to-day, 
are  quite  confident  that  we  have  nothing  in  common 
with  the  chief  priests  and  the  elders,  the  scribes  and 
the  Pharisees  of  our  Lord's  day.  Our  religion  is 
different  from  theirs.  We  would  never  put  any  one 
to  death  who  came  among  us  and  taught  us  righteous- 
ness. No,  we  would  not,  because  Christianity  has  so 
far  softened  our  civilisation  and  enlarged  our  compre- 
hension that  those  days  of  persecution  and  execution 


308  Modern  Christianity 

are  past,  at  least  in  this  country  (although  it  must  be 
remembered  that  on  the  whole  Christianity  persecuted 
both  outsiders  and  its  own  heretics  more  cruelly  and 
more  remorselessly  than  Judaism  persecuted  Jesus  and 
His  followers  in  the  early  days,  and  that  even  to-day 
Christianity  in  many  countries  has  not  passed  out  of 
the  persecuting  stage).  We  of  this  country  have  been 
so  far  softened  and  so  far  broadened  by  the  lofty  and 
lovely  teachings  of  Jesus  that  we  would  not  persecute 
Him  if  He  appeared  among  us  to-day.  We  know  it, 
because  we  would  not  persecute  any  one  who  preached 
righteousness,  however  much  we  might  laugh  at  him 
or  mock  him.  It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  we 
would  hear  Him  or  become  His  followers.  It  does  not 
follow  that  we  would  not  mock  and  deride  Him  and 
persecute  Him  with  our  tongues.  We  would  do  so 
just  so  surely  as  we  make  the  outward  act,  the  out- 
ward form,  the  outward  custom  the  thing  of  importance, 
that  by  which  we  determine  our  life  and  our  relations  to 
those  about  us,  whether  in  the  narrower  sphere  of  re- 
ligion in  worship  and  belief  or  the  broader  sphere  of 
religion  in  life  to  which  I  referred  a  moment  since. 

What  is  it  that  determines  your  choices  in  life, — 
your  friendships,  your  admirations?  Are  you  keenly 
alive  to  beauty  of  character?  Does  your  heart  go 
out  towards  the  people  that  are  striving  for  the  noble 
and  the  good,  who  are  giving  themselves  in  service  and 
sacrifice?  Are  you  in  the  current  of  that  life  of  love? 

How  often  we  meet  so-called  Christian  people,  highly 
respectable  people,  who  are  striving  with  all  their  might 
to  keep  up  appearances.  They  must  do  as  their  neigh- 
bours do,  that  is,  those  particular  neighbours  who  set  the 


Respectables  and  Publicans       309 

pace  they  try  to  follow.  They  must  try  to  live  like 
them,  dress  like  them,  entertain,  if  they  can,  like  them, 
or  at  least  make  a  proper  appearance  at  their  entertain- 
ments. They  must  live  after  a  certain  fashion,  in  a 
certain  part  of  the  town.  They  live  up  to  the  edge  of 
their  income  and  the  edge  of  their  strength  and  time, — 
all  their  money,  strength,  and  time  must  be  devoted  to 
keeping  up  appearances.  To  the  others  that  life  may 
be  no  strain.  They  are  more  comfortably  placed 
it  may  be  in  worldly  goods;  but  just  because  they  are 
better  off,  therefore,  these  others  are  imitating  them 
and  striving  to  be  like  them.  You  meet  hundreds  of 
such  people,  who  are  throwing  their  lives  away  in  the 
pursuit  of  egotism  and  selfishness,  stifling  every  higher 
thing  within  them  that  they  may  be  "respectable." 
They  lose  the  reality  of  life  in  seeking  after  the  sham. 
We  have  hundreds  of  these  people  in  our  churches,  who 
do  nothing,  who  are  nothing.  They  say  the  Creed,  they 
profess  their  belief,  they  contribute  what  they  abso- 
lutely have  to  contribute  as  a  matter  of  respectability 
toward  the  expenses  of  the  Church.  If  it  is  the  correct 
thing,  they  take  some  part  in  the  activities  of  the 
Church.  They  do  it  as  a  form  and  think  that  is  all 
that  is  necessary.  They  are  respectable  and  self- 
righteous.  It  is  of  just  such  people  as  this  that  our 
Lord  uttered  those  scathing,  awful  words  of  the  text: 
"The  publicans  and  harlots  go  into  the  kingdom  of 
God  before  you." 

But  that  text  goes  further  still.  You  have  often 
heard  it  said,  because  it  has  become  a  sort  of  fashion- 
able thing  to  say,  that  if  you  go  into  a  working-men's 
meeting  you  will  find  that  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ 


310  Modern  Christianity 

rouses  enthusiasm,  while  the  name  of  the  Church  calls 
forth  execrations.  That  is  an  exaggeration,  a  very 
great  exaggeration;  but  there  is  enough  truth  behind 
it  to  make  us  who  call  ourselves  Christians  stop  and 
think.  We  call  the  Church  the  body  of  Christ.  Does 
it  really  represent  that  tender,  sympathetic  life  of  Jesus 
Christ? 

The  Church  consists  of  its  individual  members. 
Are  we,  you  and  I,  trying  to  lead  that  life?  Does  our 
religion  consist  in  a  personal  relation  to  Jesus,  or  is  it 
the  saying  of  formularies,  the  performance  of  rites, 
the  maintenance  of  a  respectable  relation  ?  Jesus  was, 
so  far  as  we  can  learn,  a  careful  observer  of  the  Church's 
laws  and  forms.  He  went  to  the  feasts  at  Jerusalem, 
He  went  regularly  to  the  synagogue  on  the  Sabbath 
day.  He  constantly  quoted  and  referred  to  the  Scrip- 
tures. They  were  His  text-book  which  He  studied 
and  held  in  reverence.  But  while  that  is  true,  He 
stood  in  an  attitude  of  opposition  to  the  leaders  of  the 
Church.  He  became  a  leader  of  the  great  mass  of  the 
unchurched,  of  the  publicans  and  the  sinners.  He 
addressed  Himself  to  the  leaders  of  the  Church  in 
language  which,  if  you  appreciate  its  full  force,  is 
startling  and  revolutionary.  If  a  man  were  to  use  it 
to-day  with  regard  to  the  clergy  of  the  Christian 
Church,  or  the  wardens  and  vestrymen  in  our  churches, 
we  should  not  put  him  to  death,  but  we  should  cry 
out  in  horror  and  we  should  probably  put  him  out  of 
the  Church. 

Now  I  have  no  further  lesson  to  draw  for  you  from 
this  utterance  of  our  Lord,  except  simply  to  set  it 
before  you  and  say  that  it  behooves  you  and  me  to 


Respectables  and  Publicans       311 

study  just  such  utterances,  to  study  His  words,  His 
acts,  His  life,  not  as  something  remote  and  far  away, 
but  as  though  it  were  all  happening  here  among  us 
to-day.  We  respectable  Churchmen  are  always  in 
great  danger  of  being  choked  with  egotism  and  selfish- 
ness, of  losing  that  which  is  real  and  substituting  for 
it  a  mere  sham. 


REVOLUTIONARY  CHRISTIANITY 

ST.  MATTHEW  xx.,  16:  So  the  last  shall  be  first,  and  the 
first  last :  for  many  be  called  but  few  chosen. 

YOU  cannot  define  the  kingdom  of  God  in  terms 
of  business  service.  It  is  not  a  legal  proposition 
nor  a  business  proposition.  It  is  a  question  of  the 
relation  of  man  to  God,  a  question  of  a  man's  entering 
into  the  spirit  of  God  and  the  love  of  God.  Whoever 
does  that,  however  he  does  it,  whensoever  he  does  it, 
enters  into  the  kingdom  and  shares  in  the  glory  and 
the  reward  of  that  kingdom.  The  kingdom  of  God  is 
revolutionary,  in  that  it  reverses  the  common  con- 
ceptions of  men,  Jews  and  non-Jews  alike,  on  which  they 
base  the  practice  of  their  religion  and  their  life. 

The  national  religious  idea  was  not  confined  to  the 
Jews.  It  merely  received  a  somewhat  different  de- 
velopment and  interpretation  among  them.  The 
fundamental  conception  of  a  Greek  state  limited  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  that  state  to  a  certain  number 
of  citizens.  This  limitation  was  really  part  of  the  re- 
ligious as  well  as  the  national  conception  of  the  Greek 
state.  As  over  against  the  outside  world  the  outlook 
of  the  Greeks  is  well  shown  in  the  name  which  they 
applied  to  all  non-Greeks, — barbarians.  They  had 
nothing  in  common  with  them.  They  looked  down 
upon  them  and  despised  them.  The  Roman  took  the 

312 


Revolutionary  Christianity        313 

same  attitude,  and  though  in  the  latter  years  of  the 
republic  and  in  the  empire  men  not  Romans  might 
acquire  the  citizenship  of  Rome,  yet  that  very  fact 
only  helps  to  emphasise  the  attitude  of  the  Roman 
toward  the  non-Roman  world.  Dominion  belonged  to 
the  Roman.  Others  were  meant  to  work  for  him,  to 
be  subject  to  him.  For  the  Roman  there  was  one  law, 
for  the  non-Roman  another  law.  Between  the  two 
there  was  a  barrier.  Similarly  the  Jew  regarded  him- 
self as  alien  from  and  superior  to  all  other  peoples. 
This  idea  of  difference  and  superiority  developed  with 
him  in  a  way  somewhat  different  from  that  in  which  it 
developed  among  Greeks  and  Romans,  but  the  prin- 
ciple was  the  same.  The  Jews  supposed  themselves 
to  be  the  chosen  people  of  God,  different  from  all  the 
nations  of  the  earth.  Not  only  through  the  Jew,  but 
in  the  Jew  was  to  be  established  God's  kingdom  here 
upon  earth.  With  him  the  idea  of  difference  took  on 
more  distinctly  the  racial  and  religious  character. 
The  nation  with  him  meant  race  and  religion  to  a 
degree  which  was  not  true  in  the  case  of  the  Greek  or 
the  Roman.  The  very  lack  of  a  real  national  exist- 
ence helped  to  develop  this  idea.  Downtrodden,  de- 
spised by  all,  the  Jew  solaced  himself  by  dwelling  more 
and  more  upon  his  peculiar  relation  to  the  Divinity 
and  looking  forward  to  the  day  when  God  should  re- 
cognise that  relation  by  placing  the  other  nations 
under  his  feet. 

The  whole  idea  is  an  unlovely  one.  It  is  selfish  and 
egotistic,  whether  held  by  Greek,  by  Roman,  or  by 
Jew,  and  in  whatever  variation  it  may  express  itself. 
The  fundamental  teaching  of  our  Lord  contradicted 


314  Modern  Christianity 

and  reversed  this  doctrine.  The  first  words  of  the 
prayer  which  He  left  to  all  the  world  as  a  heritage 
give  the  lie  to  that  conception  of  particularity.  God 
is  "our  Father"  and  we  are  all  His  children,  and  all, 
therefore,  brothers  one  of  another.  The  Messianic 
kingdom,  for  which  His  apostles  were  looking,  was 
not  the  kingdom  into  which  He  would  bring  the  Jews 
alone.  Any  one  whom  He  found  ready  to  answer  the 
call  to  come  and  work  with  Him  should  be  a  partaker 
of  that  kingdom.  I  have  said  that  our  Lord's  doc- 
trine of  the  kingdom  of  God  was  revolutionary.  To 
some  extent  the  revolution  He  proclaimed  has  taken 
place;  but  even  yet  men  are  far  from  regarding  one 
another  as  brothers.  Christianity,  nominally  accept- 
ing the  theory  of  one  Father  in  heaven,  soon  developed 
lines  of  distinction.  The  Christian  came  to  anathe- 
matise and  persecute  the  non-Christian,  and  then  the 
orthodox  Christian  came  to  persecute  and  anathe- 
matise the  heterodox  Christian.  In  Russia  to-day 
there  are  not  the  same  laws  for  the  orthodox  and  the 
unorthodox,  much  less  for  the  Christian  and  the  Jew. 
Russia  only  continues  the  conditions  which  prevailed 
so  long  over  all  the  earth  and  indeed,  to  some  extent, 
still  prevail.  As  of  old  Greek  law  was  different  for  the 
Greek  and  non-Greek,  Roman  law  for  the  Roman  and 
non-Roman,  and  Jewish  right  for  the  Jew  and  Gentile, 
so  in  Christendom  the  law  was  different  for  Christian 
and  Jew  or  even  for  orthodox  and  unorthodox  Christian. 
And  where  this  religious  difference  has  been  broken 
down,  still  the  idea  of  brotherhood  does  not  prevail. 

To  take  us  people  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  for 
instance,  the  conception  which  our  Lord  taught  of  our 


Revolutionary  Christianity        315 

one  Father  is  still  revolutionary.  We  do  not  believe 
that  the  Indian  is  our  brother,  that  the  Chinamen  and 
the  Japanese  are  our  brothers,  that  the  negroes  are  our 
brothers,  or  even  that  the  Jews  are  our  brothers.  We 
look  down  upon  them  as  aliens  and  inferiors.  We 
make  laws  which  classify  them  as  such  or  we  make 
social  distinctions  which  emphasise  our  opinion  of  their 
inferiority.  We  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  masterful 
and  conquering,  convinced  of  the  superiority  of  our 
type  and  of  our  civilisation,  have  practically  made  a 
religion  of  that  civilisation  and  that  type.  We  ac- 
cept the  kingdom  of  God  on  Anglo-Saxon  lines  and  for 
Anglo-Saxon  people  just  as  truly  as  the  Jew  accepted 
it  on  Jewish  lines  and  for  the  Jewish  people.  We 
would  exclude  every  one  else  just  as  the  Jews  would 
have  excluded  all  but  Jews.  We  expect  to  have  the 
dominion  over  other  races.  We  of  this  country  have 
modified  our  Anglo-Saxon  blood  by  huge  infusions  of 
the  blood  of  other  races,  but  in  doing  it  we  have  so 
assimilated  those  races  to  ourselves,  to  our  own  civili- 
sation and  our  own  type,  that  they  have  become  in  real- 
ity Anglo-Saxon.  It  is  the  instinct  of  a  conquering 
and  dominant  race  to  regard  those  who  cannot  keep  its 
pace,  who  cannot  adopt  its  ways,  its  civilisation,  its 
manners,  and  its  appearance,  as  its  inferiors. 

It  is  strange  to  think  that  in  the  world's  history  we 
who  were  once  the  last  have  become  the  first.  Our 
ancestors  were  backward  barbarians,  unintelligent, 
considered  incapable  of  acquiring  culture  and  civilisa- 
tion, for  centuries  and  millenniums  after  other  races 
and  other  nations  had  developed  culture  and  civilisa- 
tion. Races  whose  very  type  has  been  lost,  which 


316  Modern  Christianity 

as  races  have  vanished  off  the  face  of  the  earth,  built 
cities,  organised  states,  developed  agriculture  and  com- 
merce, cultivated  art  and  literature,  while  our  ancestors 
lived  like  wild  beasts  as  far  below  the  civilised  races 
of  that  day  as  the  negroes  of  Central  Africa  are  to-day 
below  the  standards  of  civilisation  of  our  own  country. 
Even  negroid  peoples  were  among  the  leaders  of  pro- 
gress and  civilisation  when  our  ancestors  had  not  yet 
emerged  from  the  lowest  depths  of  barbarism.  And 
in  the  Indo-European  stock  to  which  we  belong  our 
own  race  was  one  of  the  last  to  take  on  civilisation,  to 
prove  itself  capable  of  advance  and  progress,  of  as- 
suming responsibility.  We,  the  proudest  and  most 
masterful  of  races,  are  among  the  latest  comers.  It 
took  thousands  of  years  to  develop  our  backward  in- 
telligence, our  lower  intellectual  and  moral  sense;  and 
now  we  who  were  last  are  first.  Is  it  possible  that  there 
is  still  another  last  which  shall  become  first  in  our  stead  ? 
Is  there  some  race  which  we  now  regard  as  incapable 
of  civilisation,  backward  beyond  hope  of  progress, 
materially  and  intellectually,  which  has  developed  so 
slowly  because  it  is  finally  to  achieve  still  greater 
things  than  those  our  Anglo-Saxon  race  has  achieved  ? 
There  have  been  strange  revolutions  in  the  history  of 
the  world.  Many  first  have  become  last  and  last  first; 
and  the  end  is  not  yet. 

Is  there,  then,  one  may  ask,  no  justification  for  the 
conception  that  Israel  was  a  people  chosen  of  God? 
Yes,  it  was  chosen  by  God  in  a  sense  which  the  second 
portion  of  the  book  of  Isaiah  beautifully  sets  forth. 
It  was  chosen  to  work  with  God  for  the  nations,  to 
give  itself  and  all  it  had  for  the  good  of  the  world, 


Revolutionary  Christianity        317 

to  suffer  with  God  and  for  God  in  the  cause  of  humanity. 
It  was  a  great  and  glorious  mission,  to  which  Israel 
has  been  unfaithful  just  in  so  far  as  it  has  conceived  of 
itself  as  a  separate  people  and  looked  down  upon  or 
been  hostile  to  the  Gentiles.  The  same  mission,  I 
take  it,  has  come  now,  in  God's  good  time,  to  our  race 
and  our  people.  Kipling,  I  think  it  was,  invented  the 
phrase  "the  white  man's  burden."  If  it  be  rightly 
understood,  that  conception  is  a  glorious  one — our 
strength,  our  intelligence,  our  thrift,  our  energy,  our 
power  and  masterfulness  are  ours  that  we  may  bless 
the  world  by  bearing  the  burden  of  our  red  and  black 
and  brown  and  yellow  brothers.  This  is  not  a  mis- 
sion, however,  which  can  be  carried  out  by  force,  by 
going  to  the  black  men  in  South  Africa  or  in  the  Congo 
Free  State  or  in  our  own  country  and  compelling  them 
to  work,  treating  them  one  minute  as  inferior  to  us  and 
the  next  moment  demanding  of  them  a  conformity  to 
our  standards  of  thrift  and  morality.  We  have  a  vast 
deal  to  learn  from  Christ  before  we  can  fulfil  that  mis- 
sion, and  we  can  never  fulfil  it  until  in  reality  we 
regard  them  as  our  brothers. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  matters  national,  religious,  and 
racial  that  men  make  such  ungodly  distinctions.  In 
Rome  there  were  patricians  and  plebeians,  parts  of 
the  same  people  and  yet  with  different  laws  applying  to 
each,  the  one  possessing  certain  privileges  and  immuni- 
ties which  the  other  did  not  have;  and  that  which  was 
true  of  Rome  was  true  of  Europe  through  the  whole 
Middle  Ages  and  is,  to  some  extent,  true  of  it  now. 
Men  like  to  claim  for  themselves  privileges  and  immuni- 
ties, and  it  is  difficult  to  make  them  understand  that 


318  Modern  Christianity 

this  is  wrong  and  injurious  both  to  themselves  and  to 
those  whom  they  thus  rob  and  oppress.  In  this 
country  we  have  endeavoured  to  realise  more  nearly  the 
Christian  standard  by  legal  and  constitutional  pro- 
visions that  there  shall  be  no  privileged  class;  but 
although  there  is  no  hereditary  privileged  class,  you 
find  that  what  is  sometimes  called  human  nature 
has  proved  stronger  than  grace;  that  a  privileged  class 
tends  to  exist  here  among  us,  theories  and  laws  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding.  The  tendency  among  us, 
outside  of  that  one  unchristian  race  prejudice  to  which 
I  have  already  referred,  is  to  create  privilege  by  means 
of  wealth  and  for  the  purpose  of  amassing  wealth. 
How  the  possession  of  something  which  others  do  not 
possess  affects  our  minds!  Observe  a  little  child 
dressed  up  in  its  best  clothes.  While  those  best  clothes 
tend  to  bring  out  a  certain  respectability  and  decorum 
in  the  child's  manner  and  behaviour,  which  is  part 
of  the  reason  why  we  give  it  the  clothes,  they  also  tend 
to  develop  in  it  a  most  unholy  priggishness  and  self- 
righteousness.  A  child  who  in  its  ordinary  work-a- 
day  clothes  stands  in  healthy  democratic  relations 
towards  its  fellows,  who  is  not  noticeably  conceited, 
or  self-satisfied  that  it  is  better  than  others,  is  converted 
into  a  most  offensive  little  aristocrat  when  you  have 
dressed  it  up.  It  contemplates  its  own  superiority 
to  those  about  it  and  is  filled  with  selfishness  and 
egotism.  Now  the  same  thing  which  you  have  ob- 
served over  and  over  again  in  a  little  child  is  true  of 
humanity  at  large.  It  is  extraordinary  what  a  change 
takes  place  in  us  with  the  change  of  our  conditions, 
even  in  the  matter  of  clothing. 


Revolutionary  Christianity        319 

The  possession  of  material  goods  greatly  in  excess 
of  his  neighbour  exerts  upon  the  ordinary  man  a  disas- 
trous moral  effect.  Many  of  you  may  have  had  occa- 
sion to  observe  this  in  individuals  or  communities. 
You  have  seen  people  in  very  simple  circumstances 
ready  and  able  to  give  personal  attention  to  the  need 
of  their  neighbours,  to  receive  into  their  houses  people 
who  required  shelter,  nursing,  and  the  like.  You  may 
have  seen  the  same  people  raised  to  what  they  conceived 
to  be  a  different  condition  of  life,  possessed  of  much 
more  abundant  means.  If  so,  you  will  have  observed 
that  as  a  result  of  those  changed  conditions  it  generally 
becomes  impossible  for  them  to  do  the  things  which 
they  had  done  before.  A  gift  of  money  takes  the 
place  of  the  service  which  they  formerly  rendered. 
It  is  not  practicable  for  them  to  take  those  who  are 
in  need  or  suffering  into  their  houses  now,  or  to  adopt 
and  rear  as  their  own  children  forsaken  or  bereft  of 
parents.  You  all  know  or  have  heard  of  the  various 
organisations  which  undertake  to  find  homes  for 
deserted  and  homeless  children.  A  great  work  of  this 
sort  was  done  by  Bamardo  in  London.  A  couple  of 
years  since  I  was  in  Cape  Breton  at  the  time  when  a 
shipload  of  Barnardo's  waifs  was  brought  into  the  coun- 
try. The  people  who  adopted  them  and  took  them  into 
their  homes  to  rear  them  as  their  own  were  poor,  plain, 
simple  people,  nor  were  they  always  childless  people. 
The  people  who,  you  would  have  supposed,  from  their 
circumstances  in  life,  were  better  able  to  assume  such 
responsibilities,  people  with  more  means  and  often  with 
smaller  families,  were  not  the  ones  to  whom  it  seemed 
desirable  or  possible  to  take  these  children.  It  is 


320  Modern  Christianity 

only  one  example  of  that  which  you  see  all  around  you 
in  life — the  barrier  which  the  possession  of  goods  builds 
up  about  us,  which  prevents  us  from  doing  those  acts  of 
brotherly  love  which  persons  of  small  means  may  do, 
which  makes  us  a  class  apart  from  those  with  less  of 
this  world's  goods  than  we  have,  until  we  have  come  to 
conceive  of  ourselves  and  them  as  different  classes. 

This  has  made  itself  very  distinctly  felt  in  the  Church 
of  God,  and  we  find  among  us  to-day  class  churches, 
or  rather  the  inclination  of  all  our  churches  is  to  become 
class  churches.  We  are  a  class  church  in  the  training 
of  our  clergy,  and  in  the  social  position  to  which  we 
assign  them;  we  are  a  class  church  in  the  organisation 
of  our  vestries,  of  our  conventions,  of  our  governing 
bodies  in  general,  and  we  are  a  class  church  in  our 
arrangements  for  worship.  Some  of  our  most  dis- 
tinctively class  churches  are,  it  is  true,  distinguished 
for  their  great  gifts  to  missions,  by  their  noble  contri- 
butions for  eleemosynary  and  benevolent  institutions. 
Some  of  them  spend  large  sums  in  building  chapels, 
settlements,  mission  houses,  and  the  like  in  the  poorer 
quarters  of  the  city,  providing  creches,  kindergartens, 
visitors,  nurses,  and  much  more  to  help  to  lighten  the 
burden  of  need;  but  so  long  as  they  contrive  to  segre- 
gate themselves  from  those  masses  with  whom  they 
deal,  they  have  missed  the  better  part.  Their  wealth 
and  their  respectability  form  a  barrier  about  them 
which  renders  it  impossible  to  deal  with  these  others 
as  with  brothers  with  whom  they  gather  together  in  one 
Father's  house.  They  lack  that  very  association  and 
sympathy  which  are  worth  all  gifts  of  money,  and  which 
constitute  the  very  essence  of  that  relation  of  brother- 


Revolutionary  Christianity        321 

hood  among  men  which  is  set  forth  in  the  life  and 
Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ. 

"Many  first  shall  be  last  and  last  first."  It  is  a 
revolutionary  utterance  and  revolutionary  to-day 
in  reference  to  the  attitude  of  our  Christian  people 
and  our  Christian  churches  toward  their  brothers. 
Yes,  we  tend  to  develop  class  here  in  America,  class 
founded  on  success  in  worldly  things,  on  wealth.  In 
our  governmental,  in  our  social,  in  our  religious  rela- 
tions we  recognise  practically,  if  not  theoretically, 
this  class  distinction .  If  you  will  question  the  ordinary 
men  about  you  or  observe  their  acts  you  will  see  that 
this  conception  of  class  is  inbred  in  the  great  mass 
of  our  people.  The  very  policeman  who  arrests  an 
offender,  when  he  finds  that  offender  to  be  a  man  of 
means,  assumes  a  different  attitude  toward  him. 
Not  that  he  is  ordered  to  do  so,  not  that  he  expects  a 
bribe  for  doing  so,  but  the  possession  of  wealth  throws 
around  that  man  in  his  eyes,  as  in  the  eyes  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  people  from  whom  he  comes,  an  invisible 
halo  which  sets  him  apart  from  other  men.  And  the 
rich  man  holds  the  same  opinion  about  himself  as  the 
inevitable  result  of  the  attitude  which  the  community 
takes  toward  success  as  expressed  in  terms  of  wealth. 
Towards  this  prevailing  attitude  of  mind  our  Lord's 
words  are  as  revolutionary  to-day  as  they  were  1900 
years  ago  in  Palestine  with  regard  to  that  national 
conception  of  what  was  pleasing  in  God's  sight,  what 
constituted  God's  elect.  I  suppose  that  at  the  last 
day,  when  we  stand  before  the  Judge,  some  of  us  who 
have  won  success  here  and  have  proudly  told  the  tale 
of  that  success  or  heard  it  told  by  others  will  say: 


322  Modern  Christianity 

"  I  was  a  poor  boy.  I  began  with  nothing.  I  made  my 
own  way  by  thrift  and  honest  toil,  by  doing  with  all 
my  might  the  work  I  had  to  do,  by  using  my  hours  of 
leisure  for  extra  work  or  for  study.  By  my  own 
intelligence  and  inventive  power,  by  my  own  energy 
and  force  of  character  I  made  my  way  and  have  ac- 
quired great  wealth.  I  took  advantage  of  every  op- 
portunity that  was  before  me  to  increase  my  holdings. 
I  saw  that  it  was  possible  to  co-ordinate  different 
interests,  to  save  friction  and  loss  resulting  from 
unnecessary  competition.  I  outstripped  my  duller, 
less  energetic,  and  more  conservative  competitors. 
They  dropped  out  of  the  race,  they  were  compelled  to 
abandon  their  business  because  they  could  not  com- 
pete with  the  new  methods  and  the  new  ways.  I 
brought  a  new  spirit  into  the  trade  and  created  a  new 
epoch  in  the  organisation  of  industries.  I  hold  the 
first  place  among  the  business  men  of  my  day." 

I  take  it  that  this  plea  for  a  place  in  the  kingdom  of 
God  will  be  counted  at  the  last  day  very  partial  and 
one-sided.  What  is  asked  is  not  merely  whether  the 
man  had  the  ability  and  power,  the  energy  and  self- 
control  to  succeed,  but  whether  he  conceived  of  those 
powers  as  Christ  conceived  of  His  divine  power,  as 
something  given  of  God,  not  that  He  might  turn  stones 
to  bread  for  the  satisfaction  of  His  own  needs,  not  that 
He  might  win  for  Himself  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth, 
not  that  He  might  cause  the  gaping  crowds  to  look  upon 
Him  with  marvel  and  with  wonder  as  a  creature  dif- 
ferent from  themselves,  but  that,  as  a  brother  among 
brothers,  He  might  serve  His  fellow  men,  standing  with 
them  and  among  them,  not  apart  from  them.  Many 


Revolutionary  Christianity        323 

whom  men  count  first  shall  be  last  and  many  whom 
men  count  not  successful,  precisely  because  they  have 
not  been  willing  to  use  their  powers  for  their  own  ag- 
grandisement, shall  be  first  in  the  kingdom  of  God. 


The  Crown  Theological  Library 


Faith  and  Morals 

By  Wilhelm  Herrmann,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Dogmatic 
Theology  in  the  University  of  Marburg.  Translated 
from  the  German  by  Donald  Matheson,  M.A.,  and 
Robert  W.  Stewart,  M.A.,  B.Sc.  Cr.  8vo.  Net, 
$1.50. 

44  It  is  seldom  a  theological  work  appears,  more  fined  to  clarify  thought 
and  stimulate  real  religious  feelings  and  genuine  pity." — Independent. 

Early  Hebrew  Story 

A  Study  of  the  Origin,  the  Value,  and  the  Historical 
Background  of  the  Legends  of  Israel.  By  John  P. 
Peters,  D.D.,  Rector  of  St.  Michael's  Church,  New 
York.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

14  We  believe  that  the  course  is  adapted  to  promote  biblical  scholarship, 
and  that  their  expert  knowledge  and  positive  constructive  tone  give  them 
exceptional  value  at  the  present  time." — Extract  from  a  minute  adopted 
by  the  Faculty  of  the  Bangor  Theological  Seminary. 

Biblical    Problems    and   the  New  Material  for 
their  Solution 

By  Rev.  Thomas  Cheyne,  Oriel  Professor  of  the 
Interpretation  of  the  Scripture,  Oxford,  Canon  of 
Rochester,  formerly  Fellow  of  Balliol  College.  Cr. 
8vo.  Net,  $1.50. 

44  The  author  puts  a  number  of  disputed  questions  into  a  clear  and  com- 
prehensible form  and  indicates  what  light  modern  investigation  has  thrown 
upon  them." — The  Sun. 

The  Doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  and  the  Religion 
of  Modern  Culture 

Two  Essays.  By  August e  Sabatier,  late  Dean  of 
the  Theological  Faculty  of  the  University  of  Paris. 
Translated  by  Victor  Leuliette,  A.K.C.,  B.-es-L. 
Cr.  vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

44  A  singularly  fascinating  presentation  of  the  changing  forms  of  religion 
and  the  influence  of  culture  »n  the  transformation.     The  historic  survey 
of  the  theories  of  the  death  of  Jesus  is  made  complete  and  discriminating. 
— The  Christian  Register. 


New  York  — G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  — London 


The  Crown  Theological  Library 


The  Early  Christian  Conception  of  Christ 

Its  Significance  and  Value  in  the  History  of  Re- 
ligion. By  Otto  Pfleiderer,  Professor  of  Theology 
in  the  University  of  Berlin.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

*4It  would  be  difficult  to  name  any  recent  English  work  which  could 
compare  with  this  brilliant  essay  as  a  concise  but  lucid  presentation  of  the 
attitude  of  the  more  advanced  school  of  German  theologians  to  the  Founder 
of  the  Christian  Religion."— Scotsman. 

The  Child  and  Religion 

A  Collection  of  Essays  edited  by  Rev.  T.  Stephens, 
B.A.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.50. 

"  Those  who  are  grappling  with  practical  problems  will  find  in  these 
essays,  written  from  various  points  of  view,  much  that  is  suggestive  and 
helpful"—  The  Outlook. 

The  Evolution  of  Religion 

An  Anthropological  Study.  By  L.  R.  Farnell, 
M.A.,  D.Litt.,  Fellow  and  Tutor  of  Exeter  College, 
Oxford.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.50. 

A  discussion  of  the  ritual  of  purification  and  the  influence  of  ideas  asso- 
ciated with  it  upon  law,  morality,  and  religion. 

The  History  of  Earlv  Christian  Literature 

By  H.  von  Soden,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Theology  in 
the  University  of  Berlin.  Translated  by  Rev.  J.  R. 
Wilkinson,  M.A.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.50. 

"  It  is  the  work  of  a  scholar.  .  .  .  This  literature  has  an  "  irreplaceable 
value,"  and  its  significance  'can  scarcely  be  rated  too  high.  — N.W. 
Christian  Advocate. 

The  Religion  of  Christ  in  the  Twentieth  Century 
Cr.  8vo.     Net,  $1.50. 

**This  brief  but  weighty  utterance.  ...  A  writer  oi  culture  as  well  as  a 
thinker  of  uncommon  force.  .  .  .  The  thoughts  and  conclusions  presented 
have  been  uttered  before,  but  never  more  clearly  or  more  attractively." 
— Outlook. 


New  York  — G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  -London 


Books  by  Rev.  John  P.  Peters,  Ph.D. 

Early  Hebrew  Story 

A  Study  of  the  Origin,  the  Value,  and  the  Historical 
Background  of  the  Legends  of  Israel.  No.  7,  Crown 
Theological  Library.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

*'  The  broad  and  ripe  scholarship,  the  fresh  knowledge  of  details,  the 
constructive  temper,  and  the  reverent  Christian  spirit  which  were  always 
manifest,  gave  these  lectures  exceptional  worth.  We  believe  that  the 
course  is  adapted  to  promote  Biblical  scholarship,  and  that  their  expert 
knowledge  and  positive  constructive  tone  give  them  exceptional  value  at 
the  present  time." — Extract  from  a  minute  adopted  by  the  faculty  oj 
the  Bangor  Theological  Seminary. 

Annals  of  St.  Michael's 

Being  the  History  for  100  years  (1807-1907)  of  St. 
Michaels  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  New  York. 
Edited  by  John  P.  Peters,  D.D.,  Rector.  8vo.  With 
about  32  Illustrations.  Net,  $3.50. 

The  book  is  divided  into  three  parts1  the  first  contains  the  history  of 
the  Church,  and  of  the  neighborhood,  old  Bloomingdale-  the  second  part 
sketches  of  the  lives  of  the  six  rectors  who  officiated  there  some  of  whom 
were  both  remarkable  and  interesting  characters  ;  and  the  third  parr  an 
account  of  the  numerous  churches  missions,  and  institutions  which  have 
been  founded  by,  or  grown  up  in  connection  with,  that  parish  during  the 
one  hundred  years  of  its  existence. 

Nippur ;  or,  Explorations  and  Adventures  on 
the  Euphrates 

The  Narrative  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania 
Expedition  to  Babylonia,  in  the  Years  1888-1890. 
Rev  John  P.  Peters,  Ph.  D.,  Director  of  the  Expedition. 
With  about  100  Illustrations  and  Plans,  and  with 
New  Maps  of  the  Euphrates  Valley  and  the  Ruin 
Sites  of  Babylonia.  2  Vols.,  8vo,  gilt  top.  Net,  $5.00. 

*  The  story  is  told  with  simplicity,  directness,  and  precision.  The  book 
has  a  marked  individuality  and  forms  a  fit  companion  for  the  classic 
works  of  Layard.  Loftus,  etc." — N.  Y.  Nation. 

The  Scriptures,  Hebrew  and  Christian 

Arranged  and  Edited  as  an  Introduction  to  the  Study 
of  the  Bible.     Edited  by  Rev.  Edward  T.  Bartlett, 
D.D.,  Dean  of  the  Divinity  School  of  the  P.  E.  Church 
in  Philadelphia,  and  Mary  Wolfe  Prof,  of  Ecclesiasti- 
cal History,  and  Rev.  John  P.  Peters,  Ph.D. 
Vol.  I.    Hebrew  Story  from  Creation  to  Exile.     $1.50. 
Vol.  II.    Hebrew  Poetry  and  Prophecy.    $1.50. 
Vol.  III.     New  Testament.     $2.00. 

3  Volumes  ^  each  complete  in  itself  and  sold  separately 
**  We  know  of  no  volume  which  will  better  promise  an  intelligent  under- 
standing of  the   structure  and   substance  of  the  Bible  than   this  work, 
prepared,  as   it    is  by    competent    and  reverent  Christian    scholars." — 
Sunday-School  Times. 

New  York_-G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS— London 


The  Crown  Theological  Library 


Babel  and  Bible 

By  Dr.  Fnedrich  Delitzsch,  of  the  University  of 
Berlin.  Authorized  translation.  Cr.  8vo.  With  77 
illustrations.  Net,  $1.50. 

Every  student  of  the  Bible  and  every  clergyman  who  intends  to  keep 
~   "•"  h  should1 

ublican. 


up  with  the  progress  in  Bible  research  should  "be  familiar  with  the  con" 
tents  of  this  book." — Springfield  Rtfu 


The  Virgin  Birth  of  Christ 

A  Christological  Study.  By  Paul  Lobstein,  of  the 
University  of  Strasburg.  Authorized  translation. 
Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

"Professor  Lobstein  makes  a  strong  argument  for  his  view,  and  his 
treatment  of  the  whole  subject  is  reverent  and  suggestive.  The  book  is 
small  and  concise  and  contains  a  wealth  of  material." — The  Independent 

My  Struggle  for  Light 

Confessions  of  a  Preacher.  By  R.  Wimmer.  Cr. 
8vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

A  book  which  will  appeal  to  ministers  who  are  anxious  to  preserve  in- 
tellectual sincerity,  and  to  thoughtful  laymen  who  are  turning  over  in  their 
mind  the  deepest  problems  of  religion. 

Liberal  Christianity: 

Its  Origin,  Nature,  and  Mission 

By  Jean  Reville,  Professor  in  the  Protestant  Theo- 
logical Faculty  of  Paris.  Translated  and  Edited  by 
Victor  Leuliette.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

"  Its  orderliness  of  thought  and  its  lucidity  of  expression  make  it  a 
handbook  highly  desirable  to  possess, — a  book  to  read,  to  lend,  to  give 
away." — Christian  Register. 

What  is  Christianity? 

By  Adolf  Harnack,  Professor  of  Church  History  in 
the  University  of  Berlin.  Translated  by  T.  Bailey 
Saunders.  With  a  Special  Preface  to  the  English 
Edition  by  the  Author.  Octavo.  (By  mail,  $1.90.) 
Net,  $1.75. 

"  For  its  stimulating  thought,  we  commend  it  heartily  to  the  study  and 
thought  of  our  readers."— Christian  World. 

New  York  — G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  — London 


The  Crown  Theological  Library 


Jesus 

By  W.  Bousset,  Professor  of  Theology  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Gottingen.    Translated  by  Janet  Penrose 
Trevelyan.    Cr.  8vo.    Net,  $1.25. 


"  It  most  invites  comparison  with  Harnack's  '  What  is  Christianity?' 
Its  standpoint  is  similar.  There  is  the  same  wide  knowledge  of  the 
sources,  the  perfect  independence  of  outlook,  the  same  reverence  for 
Christ's  character  and  ideals."— Christian  World. 


The  Communion  of  the  Christian  with  God 

By  Professor  W.  Herrmann.  Translated  from  New 
German  Edition  by  Rev.  J.  S.  Stanyon,  M.A.,  and 
Rev.  R.  W.  Stewart,  B.D.,  B.Sc.  Cr.  8vo.  Net, 
$1.50. 

44  Here  is  something  more  reasonable  and  persuasive  than  the  usual 
conservative  dogmatics,  more  truly  religious  ana  deeply  spiritual  than  the 
ordinary  doctrine  of  liberals.  It  is  assuredly  one  of  the  important  doc- 
trinal treatises  of  a  generation." — New  York  Independent. 

Hebrew  Religion  to  the  Establishment  of  Juda- 
ism  under  Ezra 
By  W.  E.  Addis,  M.A.    Cr.  8vo.    Net,  $1.50. 

"  Professor  Addis  is  a  competent  scholar  in  Old  Testament  matters,  and 
his  sketch  of  the  earlier  and  more  important-,  periods  of  the  development 
of  Hebrew  religion  is  in  fact  a  careful  and  thorough  study  of  its  subject." 
— Eve.  Post. 


Naturalism  and  Religion 

By  Rudolf  Otto,  Professor  of  Theology  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Gottingen.  Translated  by  J.  Arthur 
Thomson,  Professor  of  Natural  History  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Aberdeen,  and  Margaret  R.  Thomson. 
Edited,  with  an  Introduction,  by  Rev.  W.  D.  Morri- 
son, LL.D.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.50. 

".  .  .  Is  a  detailed  and  systematic  examination  of  the  ground  of  Natur- 
alism and  elaboration  of  the  religious  standpoint.  .  .  .  It  is  well  written, 
clear,  and  even  eloquent." — Expository  Times. 


New  York  — G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS— London 


The  Crown  Theological  Library 

Essays  on  the  Social  Gospel 

By  Adolf  Harnack,  Professor  of  Church  History  in 
the  University  of  Berlin,  and  Wilhelm  Herrmann, 
Professor  of  Theology  in  the  University  of  Marburg. 
Translated  by  G.  M.  Craik  and  Edited  by  Maurice 
A.  Canney,  M.A.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

These  essays  attempt  to  show  that  the  moral  directions  of  Jesus  are  not 
complex  in  their  demands,  but  require  of  us  simply  that  one  thing  that 
alone  can  bestow  upon  the  will  singleness  of  aim,  and  produce  a  stead- 
fast, independent  attitude  of  mind. 

The  Religion  of  the  Old  Testament 

Its  Place  among  the  Religions  of  the  Nearer  East. 
By  Karl  Marti,  of  the  University  of  Berlin.  Trans- 
lated by  Rev.  G.  A.  Bienemann,  M.A.  Edited  by 
Rev.  W.  D.  Morrison,  LL.D.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.25. 

"The  name  of  Professor  Karl  Marti  is  a  sufficient  guarantee  of  the 
scholarly  merit  of  any  work  in  the  field  of  Semitic  study  to  which  it  is 
attached.  The  purpose  of  this  book  is  chiefly  comparative— ^-to  assign  the 
place  of  the  religion  of  the  ancient  Hebrews  among  the  religions  of  the 
nearer  East." — London  Tribune. 

What  is  Religion? 

By  Wilhelm  Bousset,  Professor  in  the  University  of 
Gbttingen.  Translated  by  F.  B.  Low.  Cr.  8vo. 
Net,  $1.50. 

"  The  work  of  an  expert,  a  critic  free  from  predilections,  yet  not  an 
extremist,  and  one  by  no  means  devoid  of  the  religious  sense  needful  to 
the  handling  of  so  high  a  theme." — The  N.  Y.  Eve.  Post. 

Luke  the  Physician 

The  Author  of  the  Third  Gospel  and  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles.  By  Adolf  Harnack,  Professor  of  Church 
History  in  the  University  of  Berlin.  Translated  by 
the  Rev.  J.  R.  Wilkinson,  M.A.  Edited  by  the  Rev. 
W.  D.  Morrison,  LL.D.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.50. 

Aa  investigation  of  the  history  of  the  founding  of  the  primitive  tradi- 
tions which  will  be  read  with  the  greatest  profit  Dy  every  student  of  the 
history  of  Christianity. 

New  York  — G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  — London 


The  Crown  Theological  Library 

The  Historical  Evidence  for  the  Resurrection  of 
Jesus  Christ 

By  Kirsopp  Lake,  M.A.,  Professor  in  the  University 
of  Leiden.  Cr.  8vo.  Net  $1.50. 

The  book  is  an  investigation  into  history,  and  is  concerned  not  with 
the  spiritual  evidence  of  religious  experience,  but  with  the  testimony  of 
early  Christian  literature. 

The  Apologetic  of  the  New  Testament 

By  E.  F.  Scott,  M.A.,  B.A.    Cr.  8vo.     Net  $1.50. 

It  has  long  been  recognized  that  some  apologetic  motive  is  at  work  in 
almost  every  book  of  the  New  Testament,  and  it  is  this  aspect  of  the 
writings  which  is  here  separated  for  special  study. 

The  Programme  of  Modernism 

A  Reply  to  the  Encyclical  of  Pius  X.,  Pascendi 
Dominici  Gregis.  With  the  Text  of  the  Encyclical 
in  an  English  Version.  Translated  from  the  Italian, 
with  an  Introduction  by  A.  Leslie  Lilley,  Vicar  of  St. 
Mary's,  Paddington  Green.  Cr.  8vo.  Net  $1.50. 


present  state  of  orthodoxy  after  its  adventurous  journey   through   the 
rough  seas  of  Higher  Criticism. 

Paul  the  Mystic 

A  Study  in  Apostolic  Experience.  By  James  M. 
Campbell,  D.D.,  author  of  «•  The  Indwelling  Christ," 
"After  Pentecost— What  ?  "  etc.  Cr.  8vo.  Net  $1.50. 

A  revival  of  interest  in  mysticism,  expressing  itself  curiously  in  esoteric 
cults  here  and  there,  is  one  of  the  phenomena  of  the  closing  years  of  the 
last  and  the  opening  years  of  the  present  century.  The  reawakening 
mystical  mood  has  found  notable  expression  in  France,  in  Belgium,  in 
Germany,  in  Ireland,  and  in  England.  The  volume  here  in  question 
will  perhaps  be  especially  welcome  now,  in  tune  as  it  is  with  a  tendency 
of  the  hour. 

The  Sayings  of  Jesus 

By  Adolf  Harnack,  Professor  of  Church  History  in 
the  University  of  Berlin.  Translated  by  Rev.  J.  R. 
Wilkinson,  M.A.  Cr.  8vo.  Net,  $1.75. 

This  work  is  an  attempt  to  determine  the  source  from  which  Matthew 
and  Luke  drew  their  information,  and  to  estimate  its  value  in  relation  to 
the  gospel  of  St.  Mark. 

New   York— G.    P.    PUTNAM'S   SONS— London 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 


OVERDUE. 

SEP    3       " 

*%r  v 

f 

196s) 


YB  221 12 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


